A woman in China.

A WOMAN

IN

CHINA

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A WOMAN IN
CHINA

BY

MARY GAUNT

1 1

AUTHOR OF
'ALONE IN WEST AFRICA," "THE UNCOUNTED COST," ETC.

LONDON

T. WERNER LAURIE LTD.

8 ESSEX STREET, STRAND

CONTENTS

/
CHAPTER I

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD

PAGE

My grandmother's curios — Camels and elephants — Dr
Morrison — Chinese in Australia — Feared for his
virtues — Racial animosity — Great Northern Plain — •
A city of silence — A land of exile — The Holy Sea
— Frost flowers on a birch forest — Chaos at Man-
churia and Kharbin — Japanese efficiency — A Peking
dust storm . . . 1-18

CHAPTER II

A CITY OF THE AGES

Chien Men Railway Station— Driver Chow—" Urgent
speed in high disdain " — Peking dust storm — Joys of
a bath — The glories of Peking- — The Imperial City —
The Forbidden City — Memorial arches — The observ-
atory— The little Tartar princess — Life in the streets
— Street stalls — A mercenary marriage — Courtly
gentlemen J9-39

CHAPTER III

THE WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON

The mud walls of Kublai Khan — Only place for a com-
fortable promenade — The gardens on the walls —
Guarding the city from devils— The dirt of the
Chinese — The gates— The camels— In the Chien Men
•— — The patient Chinese women' — The joys of living in
a walled city— A change in Chinese feeling . . 40-55

vii

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV

THE LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING

PAG*

A forgotten tragedy — The troops — " Lest We Forget " —
The fortified wall— " No low-class Chinese "—The
last thing in the way of insults — A respecter of power
— Racing stables — Pekin s' 'amuse — Chinese gentle-
man on a waltz — Musical comedy — The French of the
Far East — Chances of an outbreak — No wounded . 56-75

CHAPTER V

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS

A good republican — The restricted Empire of the Manchus
— Condign punishment — Babylon — An adventurous
Chinaman— The entrance to the Forbidden City—
The courtyards of Babylon — A discordant and jarring
note — Choirs of priests — A living Buddha — " The
Swanee River " — The last note in bathos — Palace
eunuchs — Out of hand — Afternoon tea — The funeral
procession — The imperial bier — Quaint and strange
and Eastern • 7^-97

CHAPTER VI

A TIME OF REJOICING

The charm of Peking— A Chinese theatre— Electric light
— The custodian of the theatre — Bargaining for a
seat — The orchestra — The scenery of Shakespeare —
Realistic gesture — A city wall — A mountain spirit —
Gorgeous dresses — Bundles of towels — Women's
gallery — Armed patrols— Rain in April— The food
of the peasant — Famine — The value of a daughter —
God be thanked 98-112

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER VII

ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD

PAGE

Courteous Americans — Nankou Pass — Beacon towers —
Inaccessible hills — " Balbus has built a wall " — Tiny
towns — "Watchman, what of the night! " —
Deserted watch-towers — Thoughtful Chinese waiter
— Ming tombs — Chinese carrying chair — Stony way —
Greatest p'ia lou in China — Amphitheatre among the
barren hills — Tomb of Yung Lo — Trunks of sandal-
wood trees — Enterprising Chinese guard . . . 113-129

CHAPTER VIII

TWO CHARITIES

The manufacturing of the blind — " Before born " — The
Rev. Hill Murray— " The Message "—Geography-
Marriage — A brave little explorer — Massacre of the
blind — Deposits of one tael — A missionary career —
The charitable Chinese — A Buddhist Orphanage —
Invitation to a funeral — An intellectual abbot — The
youngest orphan — Pity and mercy .... 130-150

CHAPTER IX

A CHINESE INN

The start for Jehol — Tuan — A Peking cart — Chinese roads
— A great highway — Chances of camping out —
" Room for ten thousand merchant guests " —
Human occupancy — Dust of ages — Eyes at the
window — Catering for the journey — The Chinese
chicken, minced 151-163

CHAPTER X

THB TUNGLING

A Peking cart as a cure for influenza — Difficulties of a
narrow road — The dead have right of way — The
unlucky women — Foot binding — " Beat you, beat
you "—Lost luggage—" You must send your hus-
band " — Letter-writing under difficulties — A master-
less woman — Malanyu — Most perfect place of tombs
in the world 164-183

* CONTENTS

CHAPTER XI

A WALLED CITY

PA Oft

Numerous walled towns — The dirt of them — T'ung Chow
— Romance of the evening light — My own little walled
city — The gateways — Hospitable landlady — Bald heads
— My landlady's room — A return present — " The
ringleaders have been executed " — Summary Justice
— To the rescue of the missionaries at Hsi An Fu —
The Elder Brother Society — Primitive method of
attack and defence — The sack of I Chiin . . . 184-211

CHAPTER XII

THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE

The crossing of the Lanho — A dust storm — Dangers of
a new inn — Locked in — Holy mountain — Ruined
city — My interpreter — A steep hill — The barren woman
— Unappetising food — The abbot — The beggar —
burning incense — The beauty of the way . . . 212-226

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS

Etiquette of the Chinese cart — Ruined city — The building
of the wall — The advice of a mule — A catastrophe —
The failing of the Peking cart — Beautiful scenery —
Industrious people — The posters of the mountains
— Inn yards — The heads of the people — Mountain
dogs — Wolves — A slum people — Artistic hands —
" Cavalry "—The last pass 227-251

CHAPTER XIV

" TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS "

Missionary compound — Prayer — Reputed dangers of the
way — The German girl — Midwife — The Bible as a
guide — " My yoke is easy, My burden is light " — A
harem — Helping the sick and afflicted — A case of
hysteria — Drastic remedies — Ensuring a livelihood —
" Strike, strike " — Barbaric war-song— The Chinese
soldier— The martyrdom of the Roman Catholic priest 252-272

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER XV

A VISIT TO THE TARTAR GENERAL

PAGE

Hsiung Hsi Ling, Premier of China — Preparations for
a call — A cart of State — An elderly mule — Waiting
in the gate — The yamen — Mr Wu, the secretary —
" Hallo, Missus ! " — The power of a Chinese General
— " Plenty robber, too much war " — Ceremonial
farewell — A cultivated gentleman — Back to past ages
for the night 273-282

CHAPTER XVI

A PLEASURE-GROUND OF THE MANCHUS

A return, call — Ceremonies — A dog-robbing suit —
Difficulties of conversation — A treat for the amah —
The British Ambassador at Jehol in the eighteenth
century — The last stages of decrepitude — Glories of the
park — The bronze temple — A flippant young Chinese
gentleman — " Ladies' temple " — Desolation and dirt
and ruin — " Happiness Hall " — Examining a
barbarian ......... 283-299

CHAPTER XVII

THE VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS

Legend of the birth of Ch'ien Lung — A valley of temples
— Wells — A temple fair — Hawking — Suicide's rock —
Five hundred and eight Buddhas — The Po-Ta-La —
Supercilious elephants — Steep steps — Airless temple
— The persevering frog — Bright-roofed Temple — Tea
at the Temple of the great Buddha— The Yuan T'ing
— Ming temple outside Peking 300-320

CHAPTER XVIII

IN A WUPAN

The difficulties of the laundry — A friend in need — A
strange picnic party — The authority of the parent —
Travelling in a mule litter — Rain — A frequented

xii CONTENTS

PAGE

highway — Yellow oiled paper — Restricted quarters
— Dodging the smoke — ''What a lot you eat! " —
Charm of the river — Modest Chinamen — The best-
beloved grandchild — The gorges of the Lanho —
The Wall again — Effect of rain on the Chinaman —
The captain's cash -box — A gentleman of Babylon —
Lanchou ......... 321-340

CHAPTER XIX

A RIVER PORT IN BABYLON

The question of squeeze — Batter fingers for the boatmen
— An array of damp scarecrows — Ox carts — Pre-
historic wheels — A decadent people — Beggars — The
playing of a part — A side show — Cumshaw . . 341-349

CHAPTER XX

THE WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT

The heat of Peking — The wall by moonlight — Tongshan
— " Your devoted milkman " — The eye of the
mistress — A little fort — In case of an outbreak — The
Temple of the Sleeping Buddha — A runaway bride —
The San Shan An — My own temple courtyard — The
missing outfit — The Language Officer — Friends in
need 350-368

CHAPTER XXI

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN

An old temple — Haunted — Wolf with green eyes — Lone-
liness— Death of missionaries — Fear — Sanctuaries —
" James Buchanan " — Valiant farmers — Autumn
tints — Famous priest — Sacrifice of disciples — Tree
conserving — Camels at my gate — Servants — " Cook
book " — Enchanted hills — Cricket cages — Kindly
people — The fall of Belshazzar — Hope for the future 369-390

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Author at the Ming Tombs .... Frontispiece

Street In Chinese City Facing page 4

Camels outside South-western Watch-tower,

Peking . . . ,,4

A Manchu Woman ...... ,, 14

The Ha Ta Men from the Wall ... „ 14

Guard-house in Imperial City .... ,,22

A Wall and Gate of the Imperial City . „ 22

Watering Streets, Peking .... „ 28

Astronomical Instruments .... ,, 28

Courtyard of Temple of Confucius ... ,,32

" Lest we forget " ,,32

Gate on the Wall, Peking „ 36

The Ha Ta Men from the Wall ... „ 36

Path on Top of Wall, Peking .... ,, 42

Catapult Stones on the Wall .... ,, 42

Soldiers on the Wall ,, 46

Catapult Stone on, the Wall .... „ 46

Camels outside the South-western Gate . . ,, 50

Camels by the Ha Ta Men .... ,, 50

Inside the Curtain Wall of the Chien Men . ,,54

Camels outside South-western Wall, Peking . „ 54

Entrance to British Legation .... ,,58

Astronomical Instruments on the Wall . ,, 58

Ramp leading to top of Tartar Wall ... ,, 64

German Fort on the Wall .... ,, 64

South-eastern Watch-tower, Peking ... ,, 70

A Fort of the British Legation .... ,, 70

Peking from the Wall in Winter ... ,, 78

xiii

xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Entrance to the Forbidden City .... Facing page 78

A Path in/ the Grounds of the Winter Palace . ,,84

A Secluded Corner of the Winter Palace . ,,84

Camels in Morison Street .... ,, 90

Making Cakes, Street in Peking ... ,, 90

The Chien Men from the Curtain Wall . ,, 94

P'ia Lou near the American Legation . ,, 94

Gilded Shop-front, Peking .... ,, 98

Corner in Peking ,, 98

Gathering in Kaoliang for Threshing . ,, 108

A Threshing-floor ,, 108

The Great Wall of China ,,114

Temple in Tomb of Yung Lo . . . . ,, 114

The Nankou Pass „ 118

Gateway in the Wall, Nankou Pass . . . ,, 118

P'ia Lou at Entrance to Holy Way . . . ,, 122

Holy Way, Ming Tombs ,, 122

A Window in a Tower of the Great Wall . ,, 126

Marble Elephant on the Holy Way ... ,, 126

Mission to the Blind, Peking .... ,, 132

Girls at Mission to the Blind .... ,, 132

Blind Boys coming out of School ... ,, 138

Blind Boys Playing at " Cat and Mouse " ,, 138

Missionary Compound, looking West . ,, 146

Festive Entrance to Buddhist Orphanage . . ,, 146

Leaving the " Wagons Lits " for the Mountains ,, 154

A Street Stall ,,154

Inn Yard, Peking Cart in Foreground . . ,, 162

Gossiping ,, 162

Tug-of-war, Buddhist Orphanage ... „ 174

Missionary Compound, looking East . . ,, 174

At foot of Holy Mountain ,, 182

Entrance to the late Dowager Empress's Tomb ,, 182

Outside a Walled City „ 188

Gate of a Walled City 188

Dead Gods at Tsung Hua Chou ... ,,196

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv

Temple Courtyard at Tsung Hua Chou . . Facing page 196

North-west corner of Wall, Pao Ting Fu . ,, 200

A Coolie in the Street, Tsung Hua Chou . ,, 200

A Temple set in/ the Trees . . . . ,, 212

Crossing the Lanho . . . , . . ,, 212

Steps up to the Nine Dragon Temple . ,, 220

Steps up to the Nine Dragon Temple . . ,, 220

Entrance to Nine Dragon Temple ... ,, 224

Carrying Water to Nine Dragon Temple . ,, 224

Through the Great Wall into Inner Mongolia ,, 230

Peking Cart Upset ... ... ,, 230

Inn Yard, Litter with mules waiting to be

loaded ,, 236

Inn Yard in the Mountains, My Carts . . ,, 236

Street in Pa Kou ,, 246

"Cavalry" ,,246

Manchu Woman and Child in Missionary

Compound ...... ,, 262

Manchu and Chinese Women in Missionary

Compound ,, 262

Bridge in Park ,,276

Emperor's Theatre, Jehol ,, 276

Pavilions on Bridge across Lake, Jehol . . „ 280

A Boat-house in the Park ,, 280

Lake in Park, Jehol ,, 284

End of Lake in Park, Jehol .... ,, 284

Lake in Park, Jehol ,, 288

Emperor's Bedroom ,, 288

Golden Mountain and Source of Jehol River . ,, 292

Mr Wu at the Entrance to the Temple . ,, 292

Women's Temple, Jehol ,, 296

" Happiness Hall" ,,296

Pavilions on Lake, Jehol }> 298

Women's Bathing-place ,, 298

Lamaserie ,, 302

Carts at the Fair „ 302

Entrance to Lamaserie ..... M 306

xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Doorway in a Temple in the Valley . . . Facing Page 306

Temple at the Top of Lamaserie . . . ,, 310

Farm-house above the Marble Priest . . . ,, 310

Bright-roofed Temple ,,314

Corner of Bright-roofed Temple . . . ,, 314

Yuan T'ing Round-roofed Tibetan Temple , ,, 318

Ming Temple outside Peking .... ,, 318

A Raft of Railway Sleepers on the Lanho . ,, 326

A Mule-litter, by the Lanho .... ,, 326

A Fair Wind on the Lanho .... ,, 330

My Boat and Crew ,, 330

Going to the Dragon Boat Feast ... ,, 338

Cook Stall .,338

A Mixed Team ,, 346

A Wayfarer ,, 346

The Fort in the Compound at Tongshart . ,, 352

Entrance to House, Tongshan .... ,, 352

Place of Tombs below San Shan An ... ,, 358

Valley of the San Shan An ,, 358

View from Temple ,, 362

Place of Tombs below the look-out place . ,, 362

A Courtyard of the Temple .... ,, 368

Tiffin at the San Shan An ,,368

Bridge across Moat, Pao Ting Fu . . . ,, 372

Curtain Wall of West Gate, Pao Ting Fu ,, 372

Seated Elephant, Po Ta La . . . . „ 376

Marble Priest on Tableland at San Shan An . ,, 376

Camels at my Gate, San Shan An . . . ,, 380

Visitors at the San Shan An .... ,, 380

Cook and Boy, Temple and Courtyard . ,, 384

The Look-out Place, Abandoned for the Winter , ,, 384

A WOMAN IN CHINA

CHAPTER I

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD

My grandmother's curios — Camels and elephants — Dr Morrison
— Chinese in Australia — Feared for his virtues — Racial
animosity — Great Northern Plain — A city of silence — A land
of exile — The Holy Sea — Frost flowers on a birch forest —
Chaos at Manchuria and Kharbin — Japanese efficiency — A
Peking dust storm.

WHEN I was a little girl and was taken to see my
grandmother, she set out for my amusement, to be
looked at but not touched by little fingers, various
curios brought home by my grandfather from China
in the old days when he was a sailor in the Honour-
able East India Company's service ; beautifully
carved ivory chessmen, a model of a Chinese lady's
foot about three inches long, dainty mother-of-pearl
counters made in the likeness of all manner of
strange beasts, lacquer boxes and ivory balls;
models of palankeens in ivory, and fans that seemed
to me, brought up in the somewhat rough-and-ready
surroundings of a new country, dreams of loveliness.
The impression was made, I felt the fascination of
China, the fascination of a thing far beyond me. Like
the pretty things, so out of my reach it seemed that I
did not even add it to the list of places I intended to

I A

2 A WOMAN IN CHINA

visit when I grew up, for even then my great desire
was to travel all over the world ; I was born with the
wander fever in my blood, but unfortunately with
small means of satisfying it. As I grew older I used
to read every travel book I could get hold of, and
later on when I began to live by my pen I got into
the habit of gauging my chances of seeing a country
by the number of books written about it. China,
judged by this standard, fell naturally into the place
assigned to it by my grandmother's curios ; for from
the days of Marco Polo men have gone up and down
the land, painfully, sorrowfully, gladly, triumphantly,
and at least half of them seem to have put pen to
paper to describe what they have seen. Was it
likely there would be anything left for me to write
about?

Then one bright Sunday morning when the sun
was shining, as he does occasionally shine in England,
the spirit moved me to go down the Brighton line to
spend a day with Parry Truscott, a fellow story-
teller. The unkind Fates have seen to it that I live
alone, and arriving at Victoria that bright morning
I felt amiably disposed and desirous of exchanging
ideas with somebody. In the carriage I had chosen
were already seated two nicely dressed women, and
coming along the platform was a porter with hot-
water bottles. The morning was sharp and the
opportunity was not to be lost, I turned to them and
asked them if they would not like a hot-water bottle.
Alas! Alas! Those women towards whom I had
felt so friendly evidently did not reciprocate *ny
feelings. In chilly accents calculated to discourage
the boldest — and I am not the boldest — they gave
me to understand that they required neither the hot-

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 3

water bottle nor my conversation, so, snubbed, I
retired to the other side of the carriage and amused
myself with my own thoughts and the sunshine and
shadow on the green country through which we were
passing. Half the journey was done when I saw,
to my astonishment, a sight that is not often seen in
the Sussex lanes, a train of camels and elephants
marching along. It seemed to me something worth
seeing, and entirely forgetting that I had been put
in my place earlier in the morning I cried, " Oh,
look ! Look ! Camels and elephants ! "

Those two ladies were a credit to the English
nation. They bore themselves with the utmost pro-
priety. What they thought of me I can only dimly
guess, but they never even raised their eyes from
their papers. Of course the train rushed on, the
camels and elephants were left behind, and there
was nothing to show they had ever been there.
Then I regret to state that I lay back and laughed
till I cried, and whenever I felt a little better the
sight of those two studious women solemnly reading
their papers set me off again. When I got out at
Hassocks they did not allow themselves to Jook
relieved, that perhaps would have been expressing
too much emotion before a stranger who had behaved
in so eccentric a fashion, but they literally drew their
skirts around them so that they should not touch
mine and be contaminated as I passed.

There is always more than one side to a story ;
how I should love to hear the version of that journey
told by those two ladies ; doubtless it would not in
the faintest degree resemble mine. And yet there
really were camels and elephants. And so it
occurred to me why not go to a country and try and

4 A WOMAN IN CHINA

write about it, although many had written before.
If the gods were kind might I not find a story even
in China.

Meanwhile one of my brothers had married a
sister of Dr Morriso^ and I had come into touch
with the famous Times correspondent, an Australian
like myself, and when he came to England he used
to come and see me, and we talked about China.
When I met him again after my elephant and camel
experience I asked his opinion, would it be worth my
while to go to China?

He was quite of opinion it would, more, he and
his newly-wedded wife gave me a cordial invitation
to stay with them, and the thing was settled. I
decided to go to Peking. Accordingly, on the last
day of January in the year of Our Lord 1913, I left
Charing Cross in a thick fog for the Far East. It
is a little thing to do, to get into a train and be
whirled eastward. There is nothing wonderful about
it and yet — and yet — to me it was the beginning of
romance. I was bound across the old world for a
land where people had lived as a civilised people for
thousands of years before we of the West emerged
from barbarism, for a country which the new nation
from which I have sprung regards with peculiar
interest. Australia has armed herself. Why?
Because of China's millions to the north. Australia
has voted solid for a white Australia, and rigidly
excluded the coloured man. Why? Not because
she fears the Kanaka who helped to develop her
sugar plantations, but because she fears the yellow
man and his tireless energy and his low standard of
living.

When I was a child my father, warden of the

STREET IN CHINESE CITY.

CAMELS OUTSIDE SOUTH-WEST WATCH TOWER, PEKING.
(See page 48)

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 5

goldfield where he was stationed, was also, by virtue
of his office, protector of the Chinese; and Heaven
knows the unfortunate Chinese, industrious, hard-
working men of the coolie class from Amoy and
Canton, badly needed a protector. Many a time
have I seen an unfortunate Chinaman, cut and
bleeding, come to my father's house to claim his
protection. The larrikins, as we used to call the
roughs, had stoned him for no reason that they or
anyone else could understand but only because he
was a Chinaman. Now I understand what puzzled
and shocked me then, and what shocks me still. It
is that racial animosity that is so difficult to explain
to the home-staying Englishman: that animosity
which is aroused because, subconsciously, the white
man knows that the yellow man, in lowering the
standard of living, will literally take away much of
the bread and all chance of butter from the com-
munity in which he has a foothold.

Here I was going to see the land whence had
come that subservient, patient, hard-working coolie
of my childhood. And the wonder of that rush
across the old world, the twelve days' railway journey
that takes us from the most modern of civilisations to
the most ancient — it grew upon me as we crossed the
great northern plain — historic ground whereon the
great battles of Europe have been fought. The
people in the train were dining, supping, playing
cards, sleeping, and the cities we passed in the dark-
ness seemed mere clusters of dancing lights, such
lights as I have seen after rain on many a hot
and steamy night in West Africa. When morning
dawned we had passed Berlin and were slowly leav-
ing the packed civilisation behind us. A grey low

6 A WOMAN IN CHINA

sky was overhead and there were clumps of fir-trees.
Dirty snow was in the hollows, and there were long,
straight roads drawn with a ruler as they are in
Australia, with little bare trees at regular intervals
on either side, and then again dark fir woods and
rain everywhere. Soon we had passed the frontier
and were in Russia, and I felt I could not rush
through without one glimpse of it, so I stayed one
little week in Moscow, and I shall always be glad
I did, though there, for the first time in my life, I
was in a country where my nationality did not count,
and it was not a pleasant feeling. But Moscow is
the city of a dream. I arrived there at night to
streets all covered with a mantle of snow. The
many lights shone clear in the keen, cold, windless
air and the sleighs drawn by sturdy little horses glided
over the white snow as silently as if they had been
moving shadows. And when morning came it was
snowing. Softly, softly, fell the flakes and the city
was a city of silence, white everywhere, and when
the sun came out dazzling, sparkling white, only the
cupolas of the many churches — Moscow in the heart
of holy Russia has sixteen hundred — were golden
or bright blue, or dark vivid green, for the snow
that hid the brilliant roofs could not lie on their
rounded surfaces. Above the cupolas are crosses,
and from the crosses hang long chains, and ever
and again on the silence rang out the musical clang
of some deep-toned bell. But it is the silence that
impresses. The bells were but incidental, trifling —
the silence is eternal. The snow fell with a hush,
there was no rush nor roar nor crash of storm, but
every snowflake counted. The little sledges were
half buried in it, the drivers in their fur-edged caps

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 7

and blue coats girt in at the waist with a red sash or
silver embroidered band, shook it out of their eyes
and out of their great beards and brushed it from
their shoulders ; in every crevice of the old grey walls
of the Kremlin it piled up.

A dream city ! A city of silence ! ! The snow
reigned, deadening all sound save the insistent bells
that rang to the glory of God, and the cawing of the
black and grey crows that were everywhere. What
have scavenger crows to do in this beautiful city?
They were there flying round the churches, darting
down the spotless roads, gathering in little con-
claves, raising their raucous voices as if in protest
against the all-embracing silence. They were the
discordant note that emphasised the harmony.

Cold, was .there ever such cold? The air
crackled with it. It cut like a knife, for all its clear
purity. At every street corner I passed as I drove
to the railway station were little piles of fir logs, and
little braziers were burning, glowing red spots of
brightness where the miserable for a moment might
warm their hands.

They say one should leave Moscow in summer to
cross the Siberian plain, because then there are the
flowers — such flowers — and the green trees, and the
sunshine, and you may see the road — the long and
sorrowful road — along which for years the exiles
have passed. I have heard many complaints about
the weariness of the journey in winter. There is
nothing to be seen say the grumblers. For these
luckless ones I have the sincerest pity. They have
missed something goodly. I suppose for most of
us life, as it unfolds itself, is a disappointing thing,
full of bitterness and — worse still — of unattainable

8 A WOMAN IN CHINA

desires, but of one thing I shall always be glad, that
I crossed the Siberian plain in the heart of winter,
and saw it beneath its mantle of spotless snow.
Possibly I may never see it in summer, but its winter
beauty is something to be remembered to my dying
day.

And yet it is a land of exile. Even in childhood
I had read of the sufferings of those who have been
sent there ; and my conception of the land and the
reality before my eyes as I rushed through it in an
express train were always starting up in comparison
with each other. A land of exile, and yet from the
plains of Eastern Russia in the west to the frozen
hills round Kharbin in the east it is a lovely land.
It is a plain, of course — a plain thousands of miles
in extent, and the vastness and the beauty of the
snow-clad solitudes cry aloud in praise to the God
Who made them. Overhead, far, far away, is the
great arch of the deep blue sky, clear, bright, entic-
ing, delightful, with no threat in its translucent
depths such as one knows is latent in tropical lands,
and below is the snow-clad plain, stretching far as
the eye can see, bathed in the brilliant sunshine.
From the desert and the mountains in the south it
stretches away north to the frozen sea ; and from the
busy towns of the Baltic in the west, in close touch
with modern civilisation, to the busy toiling millions
of the East with their own civilisation that comes
from a dateless antiquity ; and in all those thousands
of miles it changes its character but little.

But first there were the Urals. I had looked upon
them as mountains all my life ; and I saw one even-
ing only some very minor hills, deep in snow, with
steep sides covered with a forest of fir and leafless

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 9

larch, dark against the white background ; next
morning all trace of them was gone, and we were in
Asia. On the station platforms were men and
women, Cossacks of the west, Buriats of the centre,
Tartars of the east, Christians, Buddhists, Moham-
medans; there was little difference in outward
appearance, muffled as they were against the cold
which was often thirty degrees below freezing-point.
The men were in long-skirted coats, and the women
in short petticoats and high boots, so that it would
have been difficult to tell one from the other save
that on their heads the men wore fur caps, ragged,
dirty, but still fur,r while the women muffled them-
selves in shawls still dirtier. Though they looked
as if they had not given water a thought from the
day they were born, I, the daughter of a subtropical
land, could forgive them. Who could face water in
such a biting atmosphere ? I sympathised but I did
not desire to go too close when we passengers
bundled out for exercise on the station platforms, at
least most of us did. Some preferred bridge.

" My God ! my God ! " said an old military man
with unnecessary fervour. "What are the idiots
getting out for. I go one no trump, partner. Where
is my partner? The donkey '11 be slipping and hurt-
ing himself on those slippery steps next and then
our four '11 be spoilt," and he looked round for
sympathy.

Someone murmured something about seeing
the country, but he shrivelled him with his
scorn.

" Seeing the country ! This is the eleventh time
I've been across and I never even look out if I can
help myself. Know better. Oh, here you are,

10 A WOMAN IN CHINA

partner," slightly mollified. " I've gone one no
trump, and there are two hearts against you."

It was a curious thing to me that most of the
passengers in that luxuriously equipped train, with
every comfort for the asking save fresh air, grumbled
so continuously. It seems to be the accepted thing
that the traveller who travels luxuriously should
grumble. Our old soldier considered himself a
much-injured individual when the attendants did
not know by instinct when he required lemon and
tea and when whisky-and-soda ; and the breaking
up of a game of auction bridge because the tables
were wanted for dinner reduced him to blackest
despair. The hordes which through the ages have
swept, conquering, westwards probably never com-
plained, their lives were too strenuous, either they
fought and died and were at peace, or they fought
and conquered, and small discomforts were swallowed
up in the joy of victory. It is left to these modern
travellers flying eastward at a rate that would have
made the old-time nomads think of witchcraft and
sorcery to make a fuss about trifles, to complain of
the discomforts and hardships of the long journey
across the old world.

I knew the country. In the days when I was a
little girl studying my map with diligence I should
have counted it a joy unspeakable if I had thought
that ever I should be crossing Siberia; crossing the
great rivers, the Obi, the Yenesei and the Angara
that were then as far away and distant to me as the
river that Christian crossed to gain high Heaven;
that I should watch the sledges travelling in the
sunlight along their hard, frozen surfaces, I to whom
a small piece of ice on a saucer of water, which by

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 11

luck we might get if there happened to be an
exceptionally cold night in the winter, was a wonder
and a delight. I suppose my joy would have been
tempered could I have known how many years must
pass over my head before this wonderful thing would
happen, for in those days five-and-twenty seemed
extraordinarily old, and I was very sure that at thirty
life would not be worth living. And I have passed
that terrible age limit and have missed most things
I have set my heart upon, but still there are
moments when life is well worth living. Strange
and bitter is the teaching of the years — bitter but
kindly, too.

We passed Irkutsk where East and West meet, a
great city with church spires and cupolas and build-
ings overlooking the broad and frozen Angara. We
raced along by leafless woods, by barren stretches
of spotless snow, and sometimes the swiftly running
river was piling up the ice in great slabs and blocks
and girding and fretting at its chains, and sometimes
it was flowing free for a few miles, the only flowing
river in all the long, long journey from the old
Russian capital. The water was black, and dark,
and cold, looking far colder than the ice. The duck
rose, leaving long wakes on the water; then there
was a little steam, and then a greater steam in the
clear sunlight, but by the time we reached Lake
Baikal, the Fortunate Sea, the Holy Sea, the frost
had gripped the water again, the lake was a sheet of
white, and the afternoon sun shone on hills snow-
clad on the eastern side. The hills, hardly worth
mentioning when one thinks of the great plain
across which we had come, are down to the very ice
edge. The great lake, the eighth in the world, is

12 A WOMAN IN CHINA

but a cleft in them, and the railway track runs on
a ledge cut out of the steep hill-side overhanging
its waters, waters that were now smooth and white
and hard as marble. Here and there little jetties
run out; here and there were boats, useless now,
close against them; here and there were piles of
wood that would be burned up before the thaw. It
had been Siberia for days but Baikal struck the true
Siberian note.

Here there were convicts too. Some alterations
or repairs were being carried out on the line, and
drab-coloured convicts were working at them,
guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. Siberia!
Siberia of the story-teller! On every little point of
vantage stood a soldier with high fur cap, looking
out over the men working below him, and they,
splitting wood, digging holes in the iron-bound
ground, paused in their labours and lifted their faces
to the passing train. Did it speak to them of home
and culture and love and happiness and freedom, or
were they merely the brutal criminal justly pun-
ished, and the peasant, poor and simple, here
because the Government want workers, and that he
cannot pay his taxes is excuse enough.

The sun was brilliant but it was cold, bitter cold,
such cold as I had never dreamed of. Men's breath
came like solid steam, and the hair on their faces
was fringed with white hoar-frost. The earth was
so hard frozen that they were building great fires to
thaw it before working ; and as the darkness fell the
flames leapt yellow and red and blue, glowing spots
of colour against the whiteness and the night. And
with the night came the full moon high in the clear
sky, a disc of dazzling silver. The Providence that

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 13

has guided my wandering footsteps surely gives
sometimes with a lavish hand; that which I have
sought earnestly with many tears is not for me, but
this still moonlight winter's night in Siberia was
mine, and all the world that we were rushing past
was fairyland. There was in it nothing sordid,
nothing unclean, nothing sorrowful.

And it was still fairyland when I awoke in the
morning to a brilliant sun shining upon a forest of
dainty, delicate, graceful birches with every branch,
every little twig, clothed in sparkling white, for the
sunbeams were caught and reflected a million times
on the frost flowers, and the whole forest was a
thing of beauty and wonder that to see once is to
remember for a lifetime. It is worth living to have
seen it. I have seen great rivers and mountains
and been awed by mighty forests, I have watched
the thundering surf and listened to the roar of the
tornado; but this was something quite different.
Awe was not the predominant feeling, but joy — joy
that such beauty exists, that I was alive to look
upon it. Behind us lay a long, long trail. We in
the rushing train represented the onward march of
a mighty civilisation, but all around us in the
brilliant winter sunshine lay the limitless plains of
Siberia, and the birch forest, and the snow, and the
frost, and the beauty that is not made with hands,
that defies civilisation, that was before civilisation,
and we were moved to raise our eyes with the
psalmist and cry aloud : " How wonderful are thy
works, O Lord!"

But I did not appreciate the beauty of the winter
or the moonlight when they roused me at three o'clock
in the morning at Manchuria because my luggage

14 A WOMAN IN CHINA

had to be examined at the Chinese Customs. The
scanty lights on the station, the silver moon in the
heaven above lit up the platform as we passengers
of the train de luxe made our way to the baggage-
room along a path between heaped-up frozen snow
and ice, and the difference in temperature between
that station platform and the carriages from which
the hot air gushed was perhaps one hundred degrees.
The reek from those carriages went up to heaven,
but the sudden change was cruel.

Our pessimistic old soldier wailed loudest. " My
God! My God! this is unbearable!" and I won-
dered why, because on his way through the world
he must have encountered worse things than bitter
cold that has only to be borne for a few minutes.
Probably that was the reason. If he had had
something really hard to bear he would very likely
have said nothing about it. The baggage-room was
confusion, worse confounded, and nobody seemed
to know what was being looked for, opium, or arms
or both. This place is the Port Said of the East,
and people from all corners of the earth were
gathered round their belongings. There were
groups of Chinese with women and children and
weird bundles ; there were the very latest dressing-
cases and despatch-boxes from Bond Street and
Piccadilly; there was a babel of tongues, Russian
and French and German and English and the
unknown tongues of Asia. China, China at last,
and I was within two days of my destination.

And when the day dawned we had left beautiful
Siberia behind, and instead there were flat lands,
deserts of stones and dry earth, with but little snow
to veil the apparent barrenness, and hills first with

s2
5

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 15

scanty trees, but growing more and more barren as
we approached Kharbin. It looked desolate, cold,
uninviting. The land may be rich, it is I am told,
but when I passed there was no outward sign of that
richness; the covering of beautiful white was gone,
there was only a patch or two of snow here and
there in the hollows, and the brilliant sunshine was
like gleams of light on steel. At Kharbin they
examined our baggage again — why I know not —
and again it was chaos, chaos in the bitter cold with
the mercury many degrees below freezing-point
and screeching demons with a Mongolian type of
countenance, muffled in furs and rags that seemed
the cast-off clothes of all the nations of the earth,
hauled the luggage about, pored over tickets and
made entries in books with all the elaborate effort of
the unlearned, and finally marked the unhappy boxes
with great sprawling figures in tar or some such
compound.

"Four roubles, twenty kopecks." Why I had to
pay I know not, that was beyond me, but I was glad
to get off so lightly, for had they seen fit to ask me
one hundred roubles, I should have been equally
helpless. I was thankful to get out of the cold back
to my warm and evil-smelling coupe.

And at Ch'ang Ch'un I fairly felt I had crossed
half the world, and the oldest old world greeted me
with active winter. I did not know then, as I do
now, how wonderful a thing is a snowstorm in
Northern China. Here the snow was falling, fall-
ing. We had left behind us the great spaces of the
earth, and come back to agriculture. Through the
whirling snowflakes, little low-roofed houses, sur-
rounded with walls of stone with little portholes for

16 A WOMAN IN CHINA

guns — the Japanese block-houses, for Japan holds
Manchuria by force of arms — alternated with farm-
houses, with fences of high yellow millet stalks.
The doors were marked with brilliant red paper with
inscriptions in Chinese characters upon it — a spot
of brightness amidst the prevailing white that lent
tone and colour to the picture.

Here it was that the Russians and the sons of
Nippon had been at death-grips, and we who were
in this train realised why the Eastern nation had
won. At Kharbin and at Manchuria, with things
managed by Chinese, reigned confusion. That we
ever emerged with a scrap of luggage seemed to be
more by good luck than good management. From
Ch'ang Ch'un to Mukden the little men from the
islands in the eastern sea run the railway, and they
know what they are about; everything is in order,
and everything marches without apparent effort.
They bought this land with their blood, and they
are holding it now with the sure grip that efficiency
gives.

At Mukden a blizzard was raging, and the old
Tartar City was veiled in snow. When the snow
went, the sunshine was bleak and bright, and every-
where, far as the eye could see, stretched tilled fields,
bare of every green thing. Flatter and flatter grew
the land. It was half ice and half earth, and the
little sledges that were hitherto drawn by ponies
were now drawn by men. Once we had left behind
the Siberian fir, there was not a green thing to be
seen all the way to Peking. The earth of the fields
was streaked, dark brown and lighter brown; there
were bare trees with their promise for the future ;
and once we were in China proper, there were the

ACROSS THE OLD WORLD 17

graves — graves solitary, and graves in clusters —
just neatly kept little heaps of earth piled up and
pointed, something like an ant-hill. The air was
clear and sparkling, the outlook was wide. We
passed town after town, and where on the Siberian
border the names of the stations were in Russian and
Chinese, and so equally unintelligible, here in China
they were in English and Chinese.

" Do you like China ? " I asked a Frenchman who
sat opposite me at tiffin.

" No," said he frankly. " It is too English." But
he laughed when I said that naturally I considered
that a distinct point in the Chinaman's favour.

A wind rose, and it was as if the brown earth
were literally lifted into the air. Everything was
smothered in a dust storm. The atmosphere was
heavy as a London fog, a fog that had been dried
by some freezing process. The air was full of dry
brown particles that shrivelled the skin, and parched
the lips, and made me weigh in my mind the respec-
tive merits of a soft, moist air, and a clear and spark-
ling one. I had left London in a yellow fog that
veiled the tops of the houses, and lent an air of
mystery to the street in the near distance^ I arrived
at Peking in a typical North China dust storm. We
came through the wall, the wall of the Chinese city,
that until I had seen the Tartar wall looked grey,
and grim, and stern, and solid, and I wondered at
the curved tiled roofs, and the low houses, and the
great bare spaces that go to make up the city.

The East at last, the Far East! All across the
old world I had come ; and here on a bitter cold
February afternoon, with a wild wind blowing, the
train drew up outside the Tartar wall, the wall that

B

18 A WOMAN IN CHINA

Kublai Khan and the Ming Emperors built in the
capital city of the civilisation that was old when the
Roman legions planted their eagles in the marshes
of the Thames. I had reached China, the land of
blue skies and of sunshine ; the land of desperate
poverty and of wonderful wealth ; the land of
triumph, and of martyrdom, and of mystery. What
was it going to hold for me ?

CHAPTER II

A CITY OF THE AGES

Chien Men Railway Station— Driver Chow—" Urgent speed in
high disdain " — Peking dust storm — Joys of a bath — The
glories of Peking — The Imperial City — The Forbidden City
— Memorial arches — The observatory — The little Tartar
princess — Life in the streets — Street stalls — A mercenary
marriage — Courtly gentlemen.

I LOOKED out of the carriage window as the train ran
through the Chinese city on its way to the Chien
Men railway station, and wondered what the future
was going to be like, and I wondered aloud.

"How will I get on?"

Opposite me sat an amusing young gentleman
with a ready tongue.

" Oh you'll be all right," said he. " The Chinese

'11 like you because you're fat and o " and then

he checked himself seeing, I suppose, the dawning
wrath in my eyes. The Chinese admire fat people
and they respect the old, but I had not been accus-
tomed to looking upon myself as old yet, though I
had certainly seen more years than he had, and as
for fat — well I had fondly hoped my friends looked
upon it as a pleasing plumpness. With these
chastening remarks sinking into my soul, we rolled
into the railway station.

The railways in China, with a few exceptions,
have been built by the English or French— mostly

19

20 A WOMAN IN CHINA

by the English — and are managed to a great extent
on European lines, so that arriving at the railway
station in Peking does not differ very much from
arriving at any other great terminus, save for the
absence of cabs ; but I imagine there must be differ-
ences, and that those who run the lines have little
difficulties to contend with that would not occur on
the London and North Western for example.

" DEAR SIR," — wrote a stationmaster once to the
locomotive superintendent — " I have, with many
tears, to call your attention to your driver, Chow,
who holds urgent speed in high disdain."

The locomotive superintendent, without any
tears, investigated the charge against this driver,
Chow. The line was worked on the staff system.
No driver could leave a station without giving up
the staff he had brought in, and receiving the corres-
ponding one for the next stretch of line. The staff
— to follow the directions — is to be handed to the
driver by the stationmaster, but the stationmaster
on this, and I expect on many other occasions, for
the Chinese are past-masters in the art of delegating
work to someone else, had handed the staff to a
coolie and gone about his pleasure. Now Chow
evidently had a grudge against him, for, I fear me,
no one believed in his altruism. He insisted on the
strict letter of the law and declined to take the staff
until it was handed to him by the important man
himself, and he kept the whole train waiting, while
that worthy was searched for, and hauled out of the
particular gambling-house he most affected. When
the gentleman appeared, furious and angry, on the
platform, Chow calmly lifted up his staff to effect

A CITY OF THE AGES 21

an exchange, and he swore on investigation he had
forgotten that the end the stationmaster received
had been reposing for all the long wait upon the
nearly red-hot boiler ! That the stationmaster burnt
his fingers is a mild statement of the case.

There was a wild wind blowing when I stepped
out of the train and looked around me at the frown-
ing walls, at least I looked as much as I could, for
the day was bitterly cold, and most of the ground
was in the air. A London fog was nothing to it,
that is soft and still and filthy, this was hard and
gritty, moving fast and equally filthy, and every
one of the passengers was desperately anxious to
exchange the bleak railway station for the warmth
and comfort and cleanliness to be found between
four walls.

I was just as anxious as anybody else, but by the
time I had collected my luggage the awful facts
were borne in on me that all the people with whom
I had made friends on the way across, were rapidly
departing, and that there was no one to meet me.
Peking was wonderful, I knew it was wonderful ;
there were such walls as I had never even dreamt of,
towering above me, but I was not able to rise above
the fact that I was in a strange city, among quaint-
looking people who spoke an unknown tongue, and
that I did not know where to go. And the Morri-
sons' invitation had been most cordial. I had
rejected all offers of help, because I was so sure
someone from their house would be there to meet
me, now I seized the last remaining passenger who
could speak a little Chinese, and, with his help, got
a hand-cart for my gear, drawn by two ragged men,
and a rickshaw for myself — this man haulage, this

22 A WOMAN IN CHINA

cheapness of human labour, made me realise more
quickly than anything else could have done, that I
had really arrived in the Eastern world — and after
a little debate with myself I started for Dr Morri-
son's. I had been asked to stay there, and I felt it
would be rude to go to the hotel, but as we drove
through the streets I thought — as much as the dust,
the filthy dust — that the violent gusts of wind were
blowing in my face would allow — not of the wonders
of this new world upon which I was entering, but
of how I should announce myself to these people
who apparently were not expecting me. I had such
a lot of luggage too!

At last the coolies stopped opposite a door
guarded by two stone lions, and as I got out of
my rickshaw, entered the porch, and stood outside
a little green wicket gate, the doorkeeper stepped
out of his room and looked at me. He was clad all
in blue cotton and he had an impassive face and
just enough English for a doorkeeper.

No, Missie was not at home, he announced calmly.
"Master?" I asked frantically, but he shook his
head, Master was out too. Here was a dilemma.
I would have gone straight to the hotel I had
discovered Peking boasted, but I feared they might
think it rude. I made him understand I would
come in and wait a little, and my luggage, my
dilapidated luggage, for Kharbin and Manchuria
had been hard on it, was carried into the courtyard
of the first Chinese house I had ever seen. But I
wasn't thinking of sight-seeing then ; I was wonder-
ing what I should do. I questioned the No. i boy,
as I subsequently found he was, a pleasant-faced
little man in a long blue coat or dress, whichever

GUARD-HOUSE IN IMPERIAL CITY.

A WALL AND GATE OF THE IMPERIAL CITY

A CITY OF THE AGES 23

you please to call it, and a little round silk cap
suppressing his somewhat wild hair. I learned
afterwards that some students, enthusiastic for the
new regime, had caught him the day before and
shorn off his queue with no skilful hands. It was
his opinion that Missie was not expecting a guest,
but he suggested I should come inside and have
some tea. The thought of tea was distinctly com-
forting, and so was his attitude. It suggested that
unexpected guests were evidently received with
hospitality, and dirty as I felt myself to be, I went
in and sat down to a meal of tea and cakes.

" I makee room ready chop chop," announced the
boy, and I drank tea and ate cakes, wondering
whether I ought not to stop him, and say he had
better wait till his mistress came home. And I felt
so horribly dirty, too. Then there came in a lady
who also looked at me with surprise.

She had come to tea with Mrs Morrison, and she
was quite sure Mrs Morrison was expecting no
guest. This was awful. I became so desperate
that nothing seemed to matter, and I went on eating
cake and drinking tea till presently the No. i boy
came in again, and calmly announced:

" Barf ready."

And I had just been told that my hostess did not
expect me!

I looked at the lady sitting opposite me, I looked
at the boy, and I considered my very dirty and
dishevelled self. I had not even seen a bath since
I left Moscow. I had come through the Peking
streets in a Peking dust storm, and I felt a bath was
a temptation not to be resisted, wherever that bath
was offered; so I arose and followed the boy, and

24 A WOMAN IN CHINA

presently Mrs Morrison, coming into her own court-
yard, was confronted by a heap of strange luggage,
and a boy standing over it with a feather duster, no
mere feather duster could have coped with the dirt
upon it, but a Chinese servant would attack a hornet's
nest with one ; it is his badge of office. He looked
up at her and remarked, in that friendly and con-
versational manner with which the Chinese servant
makes the wheels of life go smoothly for his Missie
when he has her alone.

" One piecey gentleman in barf ! "

She came and knocked at the bedroom door
when I was doing my hair and feeling much more
able to face the world, and made me most cordially
welcome, and, when I was fully dressed and back
in the drawing-room, Dr Morrison appeared, and
said he was glad to see me, and no one mentioned
that my arrival had been unexpected, till a week
later, when the letter I had written saying by what
train I was coming, turned up.

I stayed with Dr Morrison and his pretty young
wife for close on a fortnight, and they gave me most
kindly hospitality, and not only did I view the
wonders of Peking, make some acquaintances and
friends, but saw just a little of the peculiarities of
Chinese servants. They are good, there is no
gainsaying it, but sometimes they did surprise me.
Dr Morrison has a secretary, young and slim and
clever, who in the early days of our acquaintance-
ship was wont very kindly to come over and help
me in the important matter of fastening up dresses
at the back. One evening, being greatly in need of
her assistance, I sent across the courtyard to her,
and the startled young lady was calmly informed by

A CITY OF THE AGES 25

a bland and smiling boy as if it were the most
natural thing in the world:

" One piecey gentleman wanchee in he's
bedroom."

At first I don't think I appreciated Peking. It
left me cold, and my heart sank, for I had come to
write about it, to gain material perhaps for a novel,
and this most certainly is a truth, you cannot write
well about a place unless you either love or hate it.
Still, I have always had a great distaste for dashing
through a country like an American tourist, and so
I settled down at the Wagons Lits Hotel, surely the
most cosmopolitan hotel in the world.

And then by slow degrees my eyes were opened,
and I saw. Blind, blind, how could I have been
so blind ? It makes me troubled. Have other good
things been offered me in life? And have I turned
away and missed them? The wonder of what I
have seen in Peking never palls, it grows upon me
daily.

"Walk about Zion and go round about her . . .
consider her palaces that ye may tell it to the
generation following." So chanted the psalmist,
not so much, perhaps, for the sake of future genera-
tions, but because her beauty and charm so filled
his soul that his lips were forced to song. "Tell
the towers thereof, mark ye well her bulwarks."
Far back in the ages, a nation great and civilised on
the eastern edge of the plain that stretches half
across the world, builded themselves a mighty city.
Peking first came into being when we Western
nations, who pride ourselves upon our intense
civilisation, were but naked savages, hunters and
nomads, and she, spoiled and sacked and looted,

26 A WOMAN IN CHINA

taking fresh masters, and absorbing them, Chinese
and Tartar, Ming and Manchu, has endured even
unto the present day. To-day, the spirit of the
West is breathing over her and she responds a little,
ever so little, and murmurs of change, yet she
remains the same at heart as she has been through
the ages. How should she change? She is
wedded to her past, she can no more be divorced
from it than can the morning from the evening.

There is something wonderful and antique about
any walled city, but a walled city like Peking stands
alone. The very modern railway comes into the
Chinese City through an archway in the wall, and
the railway station, the hideous modern railway
station, lies just outside the great wall of the Tartar
City. There are three cities in Peking, indeed for
the last few years there have been four — four
distinct cities. There is the Imperial City, enclosed
in seven miles of pinkish red wall, close on twenty
feet high, and in the Imperial City, the very heart
of it, behind more pinkish red walls, is the For-
bidden City, where dwell the remnant of the Manchu
Dynasty, the baby emperor and his guardians, the
women, the eunuchs, the attendants that make up
such a gathering as waited in bygone days on Darius,
King of the Medes, or Ahasuerus, King of Babylon.
Here there are spacious courtyards and ancient
temples and palaces, and audience halls with
yellowish-brown tiled roofs, extensive lakes, where
multitudes of wild duck, flying north for the summer,
or south for the winter, find a resting-place, watch-
towers and walls, and tunnelled gateways through
those walls. When through the ages the greatest
artists of a nation have been giving their minds to

A CITY OF THE AGES 27

the beautifying of a city, the things of beauty in that
city are so numerous that it seems impossible for
one mind to grasp them, to realise the wonder and
the charm, especially when that charm is exotic and
evasive.

The Imperial City, all round the Forbidden City,
consists of a network of narrow streets and alleys
lined with low buildings with windows of delicate
lattice-work, and curved tiled roofs. Here, hidden
away in silent peaceful courtyards shaded by gnarled
old trees, are temples guarded by shaven priests
in faded red robes. Their hangings are torn and
faded, the dust lies on their altars, and the scent of
the incense is stale in their courts, for the gods are
dead ; and yet because the dead are never forgotten
in China — China that clings to her past — they linger
on. Here are shops, low one-storied shops, with
fronts richly carved and gilded, streets deep in mud
or dust, narrow alley-ways and high walls with
mysterious little doors in them leading into secluded
houses, and all the clatter and clamour of a Chinese
city, laden donkeys, mules and horses, rickshaws
from Japan, glass broughams weirdly reflecting the
glory of modern London, and blue, tilted Peking
carts with studded wheels, such as have been part
and parcel of the Imperial City for thousands of
years, all the life of the city much as it is outside
the pinkish red walls, only here and there are carved
pillars and broad causeways that, if the stones could
speak, might tell a tale of human woe and human
weariness, of joy and magnificence, that would
surpass any told of any city in the world.

And outside the Imperial City, hemming it in, in
a great square fourteen miles round, is the Tartar

28 A WOMAN IN CHINA

City with splendid walls. Outside that again, form-
ing a sort of suburb, lies to the south the Chinese
City with thirteen miles of wall enclosing not only
its teeming population, but the great open spaces
and parks of the Temple of Heaven and the Temple
of Agriculture. But though the Tartar City and
the Chinese City are distinct divisions of Peking,
walled off from each other, all difference between
the people has long ago disappeared. The Tartars
conquered the Chinese, and the Chinese, patient,
industrious, persistent, drew the Tartars to them-
selves. But still the walls that divided them endure.

The Tartar City is crossed by broad highways
cutting each other at right angles, three run north
and south, and three run east and west, they are
broad and are usually divided into three parts, the
centre part being a good, hard, well-tended road-
way, while on either side the soil is loose, and since
the streets are thronged, the side ways are churned
up in the summer into a slough that requires some
daring to cross, and in the winter — the dry, cold
rainless winter, the soil is ground into a powdery
dust that the faintest breeze raises into the air, and
many of the breezes of Northern China are by no
means faint. The authorities try to grapple with
the evil — at regular intervals are stationed a couple
of men with a pail of muddy water, which with a
basket-work scoop they distribute lavishly in order
to try and keep down the rising dust. But the dust
of Peking is a problem beyond a mere pail and
scoop. This spattering of water has about as much
effect upon it as a thimbleful of water flung on a
raging fiery furnace.

Still, in spite of the mud and the dust, the streets

WATERING STREETS, PEKING.

ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS.

A CITY OF THE AGES 29

are not without charm. They are lined with trees ;
indeed I think no city of its size was ever b.etter
planted. When once one has realised how treeless
is the greater part of China, this is rather surprising.
For look which way you will from the wall in the
summer and autumn, you feel you might be looking
down upon a wood instead of a city ; the roofs of the
single-storied houses are hidden by the greenery,
and only here and there peeps out the tiled roof of
a temple or hall of audience with the eaves curving
upwards, things of beauty against the background
of green branches. Curiously enough it is only
from the walls that Peking has this aspect. Once
in the network of alley-ways it seems as if a wilder-
ness of houses and shops were crowding one on top
of the other, as if humanity were crushing out every
sign of green life. This is because there is to all
things Chinese two sides. There is the life of
the streets, mud-begrimed, dusty, seething with
humanity, odoriferous, ragged, dirty, patient, hard-
working; and there is a hidden life shut away in
those networks of narrow alley-ways.

There is many a gateway between two gilded
shop fronts, some black Chinese characters on a red
background set out the owner's name and titles,
and, passing through, you are straightway admitted
irtfo courtyard after courtyard, some planted with
trees, some with flowering plants in pots — because
of the cruel winter all Chinese gardens in the north
here are in pots, sometimes with fruit-trees thick
with blossom or heavy with fruit, and in the paved
courtyards, secluded, retired as a convent, you find
the various apartments of a well-arranged Chinese
house ; there are shady verandas, and dainty lattice-

80 A WOMAN IN CHINA

work windows looking out upon miniature land-
scapes with little hills and streams and graceful
bridges crossing the streams. But only a favoured
few may see these oases. For the majority Peking
must be the wide-open boulevards and narrow hu
t'ungs, fronted by low and highly ornamental houses,
and shops so close together that there is no more
room for a garden or growing green life than there
is in Piccadilly. True there are trees in these
boulevards, in Morrison Street, in Ha Ta Men
Street, in the street of Eternal Repose that cuts
them at right angles, but they would be but small
things in the mass of buildings were it not for the
courtyards of the private houses and temples that
are hidden behind.

There are, too, in the streets p'ia lous or memorial
arches, generally of three archways with tiled roofs
of blue or green or yellow rising in tiers one above
the other, put up in memory of some deed the
Chinese delight to honour. And what the Chinese
think worthy of honour, and what the Westerner
delights to honour are generally as far apart, I find,
as the Poles. In Ha Ta Men Street, however,
there is a p'ia lou all of white marble, put up by the
last Manchu Emperor in memory of gallant Baron
von Kettler, done to death in the Boxer rising, but
there, I am afraid, Chinese appreciation was
quickened by European force.

We are apt to think that European influence in
China is quite a thing of yesterday, that Baron von
Kettler was the first man of note who perished in
the inevitable conflict, and yet, when I looked at
the eastern wall of the city, I was reminded, with
a start, that European influence dates long before

A CITY OF THE AGES 31

the Boxer time, long before the days of the Honour-
able East India Company, and many must have
been the martyrs. There on the eastern wall
stands the observatory, and clear-cut against the
bright blue sky are astronomical instruments with
dragons and strange beasts upon them. They wer£
placed there by the Jesuits in the middle of the
seventeenth century, and I know that those priests
could not have attained so much influence without a
bitter baptism of blood. They stand out as land-
marks, those orbs and astrolabes, up and down the
wall, even as they have come down through the
centuries ; monuments, as enduring as any Chinese
p'ia lou, of faith and suffering ; but the Jesuits were
not the first to place astronomical instruments there.
The Chinese were not barbarians by any means,
though by some curious freak we Westerners have
passed them in the race for civilisation, and, as long
ago as the days of Kublai Khan, they had an obser-
vatory here by the wall. On the ground below, in a
tree-shaded courtyard, there is an astrolabe with a
beautiful bronze dragon for a stand, the dust-laden
air of Peking has polished and preserved it, so that
I can see but little difference between it and the
newer instruments on the platform above — newer
and yet two hundred and fifty years old.

And beyond the observatory in the north-east
corner of the city is the Lama Temple, a temple
with picturesque, yellowish-brown tiled roofs and
spacious courtyards, in which are quaint old gnarled
trees, and building after building in that curious
state that is part beautiful, part slovenly decay,
ruled over by hundreds of shaven, yellow-robed
monks among whom, they say, it is not safe for a

32 A WOMAN IN CHINA

woman to go by herself. There is the Temple of
Confucius, with surely the most peaceful courtyard
in the world, and there are other temples, temples
with courtyards and weird, twisted coniferous trees
in them that are hundreds of years old, pagodas,
and bells, and towers, and to each and all is attached
many a story.

Overlooking the great causeway that runs along
in front of the Forbidden City, west past the south
main gate, are two towers, one to the north in the
Forbidden City, and one to the south without its
walls ; and of these two towers they tell a story of
tenderness and longing. Hundreds of years ago,
when the Tartars were first subject to the Ming
Emperors, part of their tribute had to be one of their
fairest princesses, who became a member of the
Emperor's harem.

The poor little girl's inclinations were not con-
sidered, not even now is the desire of a woman
considered in China, and the little Tartar girl was
bound to suffer for her people. She might or might
not please the Emperor, but whether she did or not
the position of one who might share the Emperor's
bed was so high that she might never again hold
communion with her own kin. And then there
came one little Tartar princess, who, finding favour
with her lord, summoned courage to tell him of her
love and longing. But there are some rules that
not even the mighty Emperor of China may abro-
gate, and he could not permit her ever again to
mingle with the common herd. One thing only
could he do, and that he did. He built the northern
tower looking over the causeway, and the southern
tower on the other side. On the one tower the poor

A CITY OF THE AGES 33

little secondary wife, lonely and weighted by her
high estate, might stand so that she could see her
people on the other, and, though they were too far
apart for caress or spoken word, at least they could
see each other and know that all was well.

I do not know whether many of the people who
throng the streets from morning to night, and long
after night has fallen, ever give a thought to the
little Tartar princess. The shops, most of them
open to the streets, are full, and on two sides of the
main roadways are set up little stalls for the sale of
trifles. Curiously enough, and I suppose it denotes
poverty and lack of home life, about half these stalls
are given up to the cooking and selling of eatables.
In Ha Ta Men Street, in Morrison Street, in the
street of Eternal Repose, that is as if we should
say in Piccadilly, in Regent Street, and the Hay-
market, and just outside the gates in the Chinese
City, on the path that runs between the canal and
the Tartar wall, you may see these same little stalls.

Here is a man who sells tea, keeping his samovar
boiling with shovelfuls of little round hard nodules,
coal dust made up with damp clay into balls ; here
is another with a small frying-pan in which he is
baking great slabs of wheaten flour cakes, and
selling them hot out of the pan ; here is another with
an earthenware dish full of an appetising-looking
stew of meat and vegetables, with a hard-boiled egg
or two floating on top ; another man has big yellow
slabs of cake with great plums in them, another has
sticks of apples and all manner of fruits and vege-
tables done into sweetmeats. And here as it is
cooked, alfresco, do the people, the men, for women
are seldom seen at the stalls, come and buy, and

c

84 A WOMAN IN CHINA

eat, without other equipment than a basin, a pair of
chop sticks or a bone spoon like a ladle supplied by
the vendor.

They sell, and make, and mend Chinese footgear
at these stalls too ; there is a fortune-teller, one who
will read your future with a chart covered with hiero-
glyphics spread out on the bare ground; there is
the letter-writer for the unlearned; there are primi-
tive little gaming-tables ; and there are cheap, very
cheap cigarettes and tobacco of brands unknown in
America or Egypt.

I have said there is a lack of home life, and
thought, like the arrogant Westerner I am, that the
Chinese do not appreciate it, but only the other day
I heard a little story that made me think that the
son of Han, like everyone else, longs for a home
and someone in it he can call his very own.

One day a missionary teacher heard an outcry
behind her, and turning, saw a blind woman,
unkempt and filthy and whining pitifully. " Oh who
will help me ? Who will help me ? " she cried,
shrinking away from the dog that was making dashes
at the basket she carried for doles.

The missionary called off her dog, and reassured
the woman. The dog would not hurt her. He was
only interested in the food in her basket. "Then,"
said she, " I went on, because I was in a hurry, but
as I went I thought how horrible the woman looked,
and that I ought to go back and tell her, 'God is
Love/"

So the missionary stopped and talked religion to
that blind beggar, and told her to come up to the
Mission Station. She looked after her soul, but
also, out of the kindness of her heart, she looked

A CITY OF THE AGES 85

after her body, and when the beggar was established,
a woman of means with a whole dollar — two shillings
— a week, she realised that God was indeed Love,
and became a fervent Christian.

"Clean," I asked, being of an inquiring turn of
mind, and her saviour laughed.

" Perhaps you wouldn't call her clean, but it is a
vast improvement on what she was."

The woman wasn't young, as Chinese count youth
in a woman, she wasn't good-looking, she wasn't in
any way attractive, but she was a woman of means,
and presently her guardian was embarrassed by an
offer from a man of dim sight, for the hand and
heart of her protegee. The missionary was horri-
fied. The woman was married already. The
would-be bridegroom, the prospective bride, and all
their friends smiled, and seemed to think that since
her last alliance wasn't a real marriage it should be
no bar. Still the lady was firm, the woman had
lived with the man for some years and it was a
marriage in her humble opinion. So the dis-
appointed candidates for matrimony went their way.
However, a few weeks later the woman came to her
guardian with a face wreathed in smiles, "that
thing," she said, she didn't even call him a man,
that thing was dead, had died the day before, and
there was now no reason why she should not marry
again! There was no reason, and within ten days
the nuptials were celebrated, and the blind woman
went to live with her new husband.

I asked was it a success and the missionary
smiled.

" Yes, it is certainly a success, only her husband
complains she eats too much."

86 A WOMAN IN CHINA

I said there were always drawbacks when a man
married for money !

But as a matter of fact the marriage was a great
success. I saw the happy couple afterwards, and
the woman looked well-cared for and neat, and her
husband helped her up some steps quite as carefully
as any man of the West might have done. Truly
the Fates were kind to the blind beggar when they
put her in the way of that missionary. She is far,
far happier probably than the bride of a higher class
who goes to a new home, and, henceforward, as
long as the older woman lives, is but a servant to her
mother-in-law. True the husband had complained
his new wife ate too much. But Chinese etiquette
does not seem to think it at all the correct thing to
praise anything that belongs to one. And for a
husband to show affection for his wife, whatever he
may feel, is a most extraordinary thing. The other
day a woman was working in the courtyard of a
house when there came in her husband who had
been away for close on six months. Did they rush
at one another as Westerners would have done?
Not at all. He crossed the courtyard to announce
himself to his master, and she went on with her
work. Each carefully refrained from looking at the
other, because had they looked people might have
thought they cared for each other. And it is in the
highest degree indelicate for a husband or wife to
express affection for each other.

In truth, once my eyes were opened, I soon grew
to think that, from the point of view of the sightseer,
there are few places in the world to compare with
Peking, and the greatest interest lies in the people
— the crowded humanity of the streets. Of course

IP

GATE ON THE WALL, PEKING.

THE HA TA MEN FROM THE WALL.

A CITY OF THE AGES 87

I have seen crowded humanity — after London how
can any busy city present any novelty — and yet,
here in Peking, a new note is struck. Not all at
once did I realise it; my mind went groping round
asking, what is the difference between these people
and those one sees in the streets of London or
Paris? They are a different type, but that is
nothing, it is only skin deep. What is it then?
One thing cannot but strike the new-comer, and
that is that they are a peaceable and orderly crowd,
more amenable to discipline, or rather they dis-
cipline themselves better, than any crowd in the
world. Not but that there are police. At every
few yards the police of the New Republic, in dusty
black bound with yellow in the winter, and in khaki
in the summer, with swords strapped to their waists,
direct a traffic that is perfectly capable of directing
itself; and at night, armed with rifles, mounted
bands of them patrol the streets, the most law-
abiding streets apparently in the world. In spite of
the - swarms of tourists, who are more and more
pouring into Peking, a foreigner is still a thing to
be wondered at, to be followed and stared at; but
there is no rudeness, no jostling. He has only to
put out his hand to intimate to the following crowd
that he wishes a little more space, that their com-
pany is a little too odoriferous, and they fall back at
once, only to press forward again the next moment.
Was ever there such a kindly, friendly nation?
And yet — and yet — What is it I find wrong?
They are a highly civilised people, from the Presi-
dent who reigns like a dictator, to the humble
rickshaw coolie, who guards my dress from the filth
of the street. He will hawk, and spit, but he is as

88 A WOMAN IN CHINA

courtly a gentleman as one of the bucks of the
Prince Regent's Court, who probably did much the
same thing. It dawned upon me slowly. These
people have achieved that refinement we of the West
have been striving for and have not attained as yet.
It is well surely to make perfection an aim in life,
and yet I feel something has gone from these people
in the process of refining. Ninety-nine times out
of a hundred they can be trusted to keep order,
and the hundredth probably not all the police in
the capital could hold them. The very rickshaw
coolies, when they fall out, trust to the sweet reason-
ableness of argument, even though that argument
Waste interminable hours. A European, an English-
man or an American probably, comes hectoring down
the street — no other word describes his attitude,
when it is contrasted with that of the courteous
Orientals round him. On the smallest provocation,
far too small a provocation, he threatens to kick this
coolie, he swings that one out of the way and,
instead of being shocked, I am distinctly relieved.
Here is an exhibition of force, restrained force, that
is welcome as a rude breeze, fresh from the sea or
the mountains, is welcome in a heated, scented
room. These people, even the poorer people of
the streets, are suffering from over-civilisation, from
over-refinement. They need a touch of the primi-
tive savage to make the red blood run in their veins.
Not but that they can be savage, so savage on
occasion, the hundredth occasion when no police
could hold them, that their cruelty is such that there
is not a man who knows them who would not keep
the last cartridge in his revolver to save himself
from the refinement of their tender mercies.

A CITY OF THE AGES 89

But I did not make this reflection the first, or
even the tenth time, I walked in the streets. It was
a thing that grew upon me gradually. By the time
I found I was making comparisons, the comparisons
were already made and my opinions were formed.
I looked at these strange men and women, especially
at the small-footed women, and wondered what effect
the condemning of fifty per cent of the population
to years of torture had had upon the mental growth
of this nation, and I raised my eyes to the mighty
walls that surrounded the city, and knew that the
nation had done wonderful things.

CHAPTER III

THE WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON

The mud walls of Kublai Khan — Only place for a comfortable
promenade — The gardens on the walls — Guarding- the city
from devils— The dirt of the Chinese— The gates— The
camels — In the Chien Men — The patient Chinese women —
The joys of living in a walled city — A change in Chinese
feeling.

ARE they like the walls and gates of Babylon, I
wonder, these walls and gates of the capital city of
China. I thought so when first I saw them, and
the thought remains with me still. Behind such
walls as these surely sat Ahasuerus, King of Baby-
lon ; behind such walls as these dwelt the thousands
of serfs who toiled, and suffered, and died, that he
might be a mighty king. They are magnificent, a
wonder of the world, and it seemed to me that the
men of the nation who built them must glory in them.
But all do not. I sat one day at tiffin at a friend's
house, and opposite me sat a Chinese doctor, a
graduate of Cambridge, who spoke English with
the leisurely accent of the cultivated Englishman,
and he spoke of these mighty walls.

" If I had my way," said he, " they should be
levelled with the ground. I would not leave one
stone upon another." And I wondered why. They
shut out the fresh air, he said, but I wondered, in
my own mind, whether he did not feel that they

40

WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 41

hemmed the people in, caged and held them as it
were, in an archaic state of civilisation, that it is
best should pass away. They can shut out so little
air, and they can only cage and hold those who
desire to be so held.

Kublai Khan outlined the greater part of them in
mud in the thirteenth century, and then, two hundred
years after, came the Ming conquerors who faced
the great Tartar's walls with grey Chinese brick,
curtailing them a little to the north, and as the
Mings left them, so are they to-day when the foreign
nations from the West, and that other Asiatic nation
from the East, have built their Legations — pledges
of peace — beneath them and, armed to the teeth,
hold, against the Chinese, the Legation Quarter
and a mile of their own wall.

Over fifty feet high are these Tartar walls, at
their base they are sixty feet through, at their top
they are between forty and fifty feet across, more
than a hundred if you measure their breadth at the
great buttresses, and they are paved with the grey
Chinese bricks that face their sides. As in most
Chinese cities, the top of the wall is the only place
where a comfortable promenade can be had, and the
mile-long strip between the Chien Men, the main
gate, and the Ha Ta Men, the south-eastern gate
— the strip held by the Legations — is well kept ;
that is to say, a broad pathway, along which people
can walk, is kept smooth and neat and free from the
vegetation that flourishes on most of the wall top.
This vegetation adds greatly to its charm. The
mud of the walls is the rich alluvial deposit of
the great plain on which Peking stands, and when
it has been well watered by the summer rains, a

42 A WOMAN IN CHINA

luxuriant green growth, a regular jungle, forces its
way up through the brick pavement. The top of the
wall upon a cool autumn day, before the finger of
decay has touched this growth, is a truly delightful
garden.

It was my great pleasure to walk there, for there
were all manner of flowering green shrubs and tall
grasses, bound together by blooming morning glory,
its cup-shaped flowers blue, and pink, and white, and
white streaked with pink; there were even small
trees, white poplar and the ailanthus, or tree of
heaven, throwing out shady branches that afforded
shelter from the rays of the brilliant sun. They
are not adequate shelter, though, in a rainstorm.
Indeed it is very awkward to be caught in a rain-
storm upon the walls out of the range of the rick-
shaws, as I was more than once, for in the hot
weather I could never resist the walls, the only
place in Peking where a breath of fresh air is to
be found, and, since it is generally hottest before
the rain, on several occasions I was caught, return-
ing drenched and dripping. It did not matter as a
rule, but once when I was there with a companion
a more than ordinary storm caught us. We
sheltered under an ailanthus tree, and as the wind
was strong, umbrellas were useless. My com-
panion began to get agitated.

" If this goes on," said he, " I shan't be able to
go out to-morrow. I have only one coat." He
had come up from Tientsin for a couple of days.
But for me the case was much more serious. I had
on a thin white muslin that began to cling round my
figure, and I thought anxiously that if it went on
much longer I should not be able to go into the

PATH ON TOP OF WALL, PEKING.

CATAPULT STONES ON THE WALL.

WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 43

hotel that day! However, the rain stopped as sud-
denly as it had begun, the sun came out in all his
fierceness, and before we reached the hotel I was
most unbecomingly rough dried.

Things are ordered on the Legation wall, the
pathway between the greenery runs straight as a die,
but beyond, on the thirteen miles of wall under
Chinese care, the greenery runs riot, and only a
narrow pathway meanders between the shrubs and
grass, just as a man may walk carelessly from
station to station ; and sometimes hidden among the
greenery, sometimes standing out against it, are
here and there great upright slabs of stone, always
in pairs, relics of the old fortifications, for surely
these are all that remain of the catapults with which
of old the Chinese and Tartars defended their
mighty city.

The walls stand square, north and south, and
east and west, only at the north-west corner does
the line slant out of the square a little, for every
Chinese knows that is the only sure way to keep
devils out of a city, and certainly the capital must
be so guarded. Whatever I saw and wondered at,
I always came back to the walls, the most wonder-
ful sight of a most wonderful city, and I always found
something new to entrance me. The watch-towers,
the ramps, the gates, the suggestion of old-world
story that met me at every turn. In days not so
very long ago these walls were kept by the Manchu
bannermen, whose special duty it was to guard
them, and no other person was allowed upon them,
under pain of death, for exactly the same reason
that all the houses in the city are of one story:
it was not seemly that any mere commoner should

44 A WOMAN IN CHINA

be able to look down upon the Emperor, and no
women, even the women of the bannermen, were
allowed to set foot there, for it appeared that the
God of War, who naturally took an interest in these
defences, objected to women.

Now little companies of soldiers take the place
of those old-world bannermen. They look out at
the life of the city, at their fellows drilling on the
great plain beyond, at the muddy canal, that is like
a river, making its way across the khaki-coloured
plain, that in the summer is one vast crop of kaoliang
— one vivid note of green. Wonderful fertility you
may see from the walls of the Chinese capital.
Looking one feels that the rush of the nations to
finance the country is more than justified. Surely
here is the truest of wealth. But the soldiers on the
walls are children. China does not think much of
her soldiers, and the language is full of proverbs
about them the reverse of complimentary. " Good
iron is not used for nails," is one of them, " and good
men do not become soldiers." How true that may
be I do not know, but these men seemed good
enough, only just the babies a fellow-countryman
talking of them to me once called them. They
know little of their own country, less than nothing
of any other. I feel they should not be dressed in
shabby khaki like travesties of the men of Western
armies, tunics and sandals and bows and arrows
would be so much more in keeping with their sur-
roundings. And yet so small are they, like ants at
the foot of an oak, that their garb scarcely matters,
they but emphasise the vastness of the walls on
which they stand; walls builded probably by men
differing but little from these soldiers of New China.

WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 45

I photographed a little company one bright day in
the early spring — it is hardly necessary to say it was
bright, because all days at that season, and indeed
at most seasons, are brilliantly, translucently bright.
My little company dwelt in a low building made up
apparently of lattice-work and paper close to the
observatory, and evidently word went round that the
wonderful thing had been done, and, for all the
charm of the walls, it was not a thing that was often
done. I suppose the average tourist does not care
to waste his plates on commonplace little soldiers in
badly made khaki. When next I appeared with the
finished picture all along my route soldiers came and
asked courteously, and plainly, for all I knew not
one word of their tongue, what the result had been.
I showed them, of course, and my following grew as
I passed on. They knew those who had been
taken, which was lucky, for I certainly could not tell
t'other from whichz and, when I arrived at their little
house, smiling claimants stretched out eager hands.
I knew the number I had taken and I had a copy
apiece. And very glad I was, too, when they all
ranged up and solemnly saluted me, and then they
brought me tea in their handleless cups, and I,
unwashed though I felt those cups were, drank to
our good-fellowship in the excellent Chinese tea
that needs neither sugar nor milk to make it
palatable.

There were other people, too, on the walls in
the early springtime, coolies clearing away the dead
growth that Bad remained over from the past summer.
It was so light it seemed hardly worth gathering, and
those gleaners first taught me to realise something
of the poverty of China, the desperate poverty that

46 A WOMAN IN CHINA

dare not waste so much as a handful of dead grass.
They gathered the refuse into heaps, tied it to each
end of their bamboos, and, slinging it over their
shoulders, trudged with it down one of the ramps
into the city. Ever and again in my peregrina-
tions, I would come across one of them sitting in
the sun, going over his padded coat in the odd
moments he could spare from his toil. For the
lower-class Chinese understands not the desira-
bility of water, as applied either to himself or his
clothes, and, as he certainly never changes those
clothes while one shred will hold to another, the
moment must arrive, sooner or later, when his dis-
comfort is desperate, and something must be done.
He is like the wonks, the great yellow scavenger
dogs that haunt the streets of Peking and all
Chinese cities, he sits down and scratches himself,
and goes through his clothes. At least that was my
opinion. A friend of mine who had served for some
years in the interior with the great company, the
British and American Tcbacco Company, that, with
the missionaries, shares the honour of doing pioneer
work in China, says I am wrong, Chinamen don't
mind such a little thing as that.

" Those carters," said he, " in the interior as it
gets colder just pile one garment on over another,
and never take anything off, and by February —
phew! If you want to smell a tall smell" — I said
I didn't, the smells of Peking were quite recondite
enough for me — but he paid no attention — "you
just go and stand over the k'ang in a room where
five or six of them are crowded together."

And the carters, it seems, are highly respectable,
sometimes well-to-do men. I felt I had a lot to

SOLDIERS ON THE WALL.

CATAPULT STONE ON THE WALL.

WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 47

learn about the Chinese, these men whose ancestors
had built the walls.

Of course there are gates in the walls, nine gates
in all in the Tartar City, great archways with iron-
studded doors and watch-towers above. I count it
one of the assets of my life, that I have stood under
those archways, where for centuries has ebbed and
flowed the traffic of a Babylonish city, old world still
in this twentieth century. They are lighted with
electric light now, instead of with pitch-pine torches,
but no matter, the grey stones are there.

The gate of a city like Peking is a great affair.

Over every archway is a watch-tower, with tiled

roofs rising tier above tier, and portholes filled with

the painted muzzles of guns. Painted guns in the

year of our Lord 1914! So is the past bound up

with the present in China ! And these are not entirely

relics of the past like the catapult stones. In the

year 1900, when the Boxers looted the Chinese

City, and the Europeans in the Legations north of

the Tartar wall trembled for their lives, the looters

burned the watch-tower on the Chien Men, all that

was burnable of it, and, when peace was restored,

the Chinese set to work and built their many-tiered

watch-tower, built it in all the glory of red, and

green, and blue, and gold, and in the portholes they

put the same painted cannon that had been there in

past ages, not only to strike terror into the enemy,

but also to impress the God of War with an idea of

their preparedness. And yet there was hardly any

need of sham, for these gateways must have been

formidable things to negotiate before the days of

heavy artillery, for each is protected by a curtain

wall as high and as thick as the main wall, and in

48 A WOMAN IN CHINA

them are archways, sometimes one, sometimes two,
sometimes three ways out, but always there is a
great square walled off in front of the gate so that
the traffic must pause, and may be stopped before
it passes under the main archway into the city.
And these archways look down upon a traffic differ-
ing but little from that which has passed down
through all the ages.

Here come the camels from Mongolia, ragged and
dusty, laden with grain, and wool, and fruit, and the
camels from the Western Hills, laden with those
"black stones" that Marco Polo noted seven
hundred years ago, and told his fellow-countrymen
they burned for heating purposes in Cambulac.
You may see them down by the Ha Ta Men prepar-
ing to start out on their long journey, you may see
them in the Imperial City, bringing in their wares,
but outside the south-western gate, by the watch-
tower that guards the corner of the wall, they are to
be seen at their best. Here, where the dust is
heaped high under the clear blue sky of Northern
China, come slowly, in stately fashion, the camels,
as they have come for thousands of years. The
man who leads them is ragged in the blue of the
peasant, his little eyes are keen, and patient, and
cunning, and there is a certain stolidity in his
demeanour; life can hold but few pleasures for
him, one would think, and yet he is human, he
cannot go on superior, regardless of outside things,
as does his string of beasts of burden. The crenel-
lated walls rise up behind them, the watch-tower
with its painted guns frowns down upon them, and
the camels, the cord fastened to the tail of the one
in front, passing through the nostrils of the one

WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 49

behind, go steadily on. They are like the walls,
they are older than the walls, possibly they may
outlive the walls; silently, surely, in the soft,
heaped-up dust they move ; so they came a thousand
years ago, two thousand years ago, before the very
dawn of history.

These Babylonish gates have for me a never-
ending attraction. I look and look at the traffic,
and always find something new. One sunny morn-
ing I went and sat in the Chien Men, just to watch
the never-ending throng that made their way back-
wards and forwards between the Chinese and the
Tartar Cities. I took up my position in the centre
of the great square, large as Waterloo Place,
enclosed by the curtain wall, and the American
Guard looked down upon me and wondered, for
they watch the traffic day in and day out, and so
long as it is peaceful, they see nothing to remark
upon in it. There are three gates in the curtain
wall, the one to the south is never opened except
for the highest in the land to pass through, but from
the east gate the traffic goes from the Tartar to the
Chinese City, through the west it comes back
again, meeting and passing under the great archway
that leads to the Tartar City. And all day long
that square is thronged. East and west of the main
archway are little temples with the golden-brown
roofs of all imperial temples, the Goddess of Mercy
is enshrined here, and there are bronze vases and
flowering plants, and green trees in artistic pots, all
going to make a quiet little resting-place where a man
may turn aside for a moment from the rush and roar
of the city, burn aromatic incense sticks, and invoke
good fortune for the enterprise on which he is

50 A WOMAN IN CHINA

engaged. Do the people believe in the Goddess
of Mercy, I wonder? About as much as I do, I
suspect. The Chinaman, said a Chinese to me
once, is the most materialistic of heathens, believing
in little that he cannot see, and handle, and explain ;
but all of us, Eastern or Western, are human, and
have the ordinary man's desire for the pitiful, kindly
care of some unseen Power. It is only natural. I,
too, Westerner as I am, daughter of the newest of
nations, burned incense sticks at the shrine of
the Goddess of Mercy, and put up a little prayer
that the work upon which I was engaged should
be successful. Men have prayed here through the
centuries. The prayer of so great a multitude must
surely reach the Most High, and what matter by
what name He is known.

Besides the temples there are little guard-houses
for the soldiers in the square ; guard-houses with
delicate, dainty lattice-work windows, and there are
signboards with theatre notices in Chinese on gay
red and yellow paper. There are black and yellow
uniformed military police, there are grey-coated
little soldiers with just a dash of red about their
shabby, ill-fitting uniforms, and there are the people
passing to and fro intent on their business, the
earning of a cash, or of thousands of dollars. The
earning of a cash, one would think mostly, looking
at many a thing of shreds and patches that passes
by. To Western eyes the traffic is archaic, no
great motors rush about carrying crowds at once, it
consists of rickshaws with one or, at most, a couple
of fares, of Peking carts with blue tilts and a sturdy
pony or a handsome mule in the shafts, and the
driver seated cross-legged in front, of longer carts

CAMELS OUTSIDE THE SOUTH-WESTERN GATE.

CAMELS BY THE HA TA MEN.

WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 51

with wheels studded, as the Peking carts are, and
loaded with timber, with lime, and all manner of
merchandise, and drawn sometimes by three or four
underfed little horses, but mostly by a horse or mule
in the shafts and a mule or a donkey so far in front
one wonders he can exert any influence on the
traction at all. The rickshaw coolies clang their
bells, men on bicycles toot their horns, every
donkey, and most horses and mules, have rings of
bells round their necks, and everyone shouts at the
top of his voice, while forty feet up on the wall, a
foreign soldier, one of the Americans who hold the
Chien Men, is practising all his bugle calls.

" Turn out, turn out. Mess, mess," proclaims
the bugle shrilly above. " Clang, clang, clang,"
ring the rickshaw bells. A postman in shabby blue,
with bands of dirty white, passes on his bicycle and
blows his horn, herald of the ways of the West. A
brougham comes along with sides all of glass, such
as the Chinaman loves. In it is a man in a modern
tall hat, a little out-of-date; on the box, are two
men in grey silk, orthodox Chinese costume, queue
and all, but alas for picturesqueness they have
crowned their heads with hideous tourist caps, the
mafoo behind on the step, hanging on to the roof
by a strap, has on a very ordinary wideawake, his
business it is to jump down and lead the horses
round a corner — no self-respecting Chinese horse
can negotiate a corner without assistance — and the
finishing touch is put by the coachman, also in a
tourist cap, who clangs a bell with as much fervour
as a rickshaw coolie. Before this carriage trot out-
riders. " Lend light, lend light," they cry, which is
the Eastern way of saying " By your leave, by your

52 A WOMAN IN CHINA

leave. My master a great man comes." After the
coach come more riders. It may be a modern
carriage in which Tie rides, but the important man in
China can no more move without his outriders and
his following, than could one of the kings or nobles
of Nineveh or Babylon.

More laden carts come in from the west, and the
policeman, in dusty black and yellow, directs them,
though they really need no directing. The average
Chinese mind is essentially orderly, and never
dreams of questioning rules. Is there not a stone
exactly in the middle of the road under the great
archway, and does not every man know that those
going east must go one way, and those going west
the other? What need for direction? An old-
fashioned fat Chinese with shaven head and pigtail
and sleeveless black satin waistcoat over his long
blue coat comes along. He half-smothers a small
donkey with a ring of jingling bells round its neck,
a coolie follows him in rags, but that does not
matter, spring is in the land, and he is nearly hidden
by the lilac bloom he carries, another comes along
with a basket strapped on his back and a scoop in
his hand, he is collecting the droppings of the
animals, either for manure or to make argol for fuel,
a stream of rickshaws swerve out of the way of a
blind man, ragged, bent, old, who with lute in one
hand and staff in the other taps his way along.

" Hsien Sheng, before born," he is addressed by
the coolies directing him, for his affliction brings
him outward respect from these courteous people.

In the rickshaws are all manner of people :
Manchu women with high head-dresses in the form
of a cross, highly painted faces and the gayest of

WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 53

long silk coats, shy Chinese women, who from their
earliest childhood have been taught that a woman
must efface herself. Their hair is decked with
flowers, and dressed low on the nape of their necks,
their coats are of soberer colours, and their feet are
pitifully maimed. " For every small foot," says a
Chinese proverb, " there is a jar full of tears." The
years of agony every one of those women must have
lived through, but their faces are impassive, smiling
with a surface smile that gives no indication of the
feelings behind.

The Chien Men, because it opens only from the
Tartar to the Chinese City, is not closed, but eight
o'clock sees all the gates in the twenty-three miles
of outer wall closed for the night, and very awkward
it sometimes is for the foreigner, who is not used to
these restrictions, for neither threats nor bribes will
open those gates once they are shut.

I remember on one occasion a young fellow, who
had lingered too long among the delights of the
city, found himself, one pleasant warm summer
evening, just outside the Shun Chih Men as the
gates of the Chinese City were closing. He wanted
to get back to his cottage at the race-course but the
guardians of the gate were obdurate. " It was an
order and the gates were closed till daylight next
morning." He could not climb the walls, and even
if he could, the two ponies he had with him could
not. He probably used up all the bad language at
his command, if I know anything about him, and
he grew more furious when he recollected he had
guests coming to dinner. Then he began to
think, and remembered that the railway came
through the wall. Inspection showed him that there

54 A WOMAN IN CHINA

were gates across it, also fast closed, and here he
got his second wind, and quite a fresh assortment of
bad language, which was checked by the whistle of
an approaching train. Then a bright idea occurred
to him. Where a train could go, a pony could go,
and he stood close to the line in the darkness,
instructed his mafoo to keep close beside him, and
the moment the train passed, got on to the line and
followed in its wake, regardless of the protests
of raging gatekeepers. He got through the gate
triumphantly, but then, alas, his troubles began, for
the railway line had not been built with a view to
taking ponies through the wall. There were rocks
and barbed wire, there were fences, and there were
mud holes, and his guests are wont to relate how as
they were sitting down to table under the hospitable
guidance of his No. i boy, there arrived on the
scene a man, mud to the eyes — it was summertime
when there is plenty of mud in the country round
Peking — and silent, because no profanity of which
he was capable could possibly have done justice to
his feelings. Such are some of the joys of living in
a Babylonish city.

When I had sat an hour in the gate I rose to go,
and the rickshaw coolie and I disagreed as to the
fare. A rickshaw coolie and I never did agree as
to the fare. Gladly would I pay double to avoid a
row, but the coolie, taken from the Legation Quarter
of Peking where the tourists spoil him, would
complain and try to extort more if you offered him
a dollar for a ten-cent ride, therefore the thing was
not to be avoided. I did not see my way to getting
clear, and a crowd began to gather. Then there
came along a Chinese, a well-dressed young man.

INSIDE THE CURTAIN WALL OF THE CHIEN MEN.

I A

CAMELS OUTSIDE SOUTH-WESTERN WALL, PEKING.

WALLS AND GATES OF BABYLON 55

His long petticoats of silk were slit at the sides, he
had on a silken jacket and a little round cap. He
wore no queue, because few of the men of his
generation, and of his rank wear a queue, and he
spoke English as good as my own.

"What is the matter?" I told him. "How
much did you pay him?" "Forty cents." "It is
too much," said he, and he called a policeman, and
that coolie was driven off with contumely. But it
marked a wonderful stride in Chinese feeling that a
Chinese should come to the assistance of a foreigner
in distress. Not very long ago he would have
passed on the other side, scorning the woman of the
outer barbarians, glad in his heart that she should be
" done " even by one so low in the social scale as a
rickshaw coolie, a serf of the great city these ancient
walls enclose.

CHAPTER IV

THE LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING

A forgotten tragedy— The troops—" Lest We Forget "—The
fortified wall — " No low-class Chinese " — The last thing in
the way of insults — A respecter of power — Racing stables —
Pekin s' amuse — Chinese gentleman on a waltz — Musical
comedy — The French of the Far East — Chances of an out-
break— No wounded.

" AT Canton a few years since," wrote Sir George
Staunton, recording the visit of the first British
Ambassador to the Emperor of China in 1798, "an
accident happened which had well-nigh put a stop
to our foreign trade. Evils of every kind fraught
with this tendency are to be apprehended, and ought
to be particularly guarded against, especially by a
commercial nation. On some day of rejoicing in
firing the guns of one of those vessels which navi-
gates between the British settlements in India and
Canton, but not in the employment of the East
India Company, two Chinese, in a boat lying near
the vessel, were accidentally killed by the gunner.
The crime of murder is never pardoned in China.
The Viceroy of the Province, fired with indignation
at the supposed atrocity, demanded the perpetrator
of the deed, or the person of him who ordered it.
The event was stated in remonstrance to be purely
accidental but the Viceroy, supposing it to have been
done from a wicked disposition, still persisted in his

56

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 57

demand, and to assure himself of that object, he
seized one of the principal supercargoes. The other
factories being alarmed, united themselves with the
English as in a common cause, and seemed disposed
to resist the intentions of the Viceroy who on his
part arranged his troops on the banks of the river to
force a compliance. It was at last deemed expe-
dient on principles of policy, to give up the gunner
with scarce a glimmering of hope that his life would
be spared."

Later on in a casual footnote he records that their
worst fears had been realised, and the unfortunate
gunner, given up, let us hope, not so much from
motives of policy as to save the supercargo, had been
done to death.

That incident, to my mind, explains the Legation
Quarter of Peking to-day. Of course the Legation,
in its present form, dates only from the Boxer rising,
but the germ of it was there when the merchants
of the assembled nations felt themselves compelled
to sacrifice the careless gunner "from motives of
policy." One hundred and twenty years ago the
Western nations were only a stage removed from
the barbaric civilisation the Chinese had reached two
or three thousand years before, but still they were
moving onward, and they felt they must combine if
they would trade with this rich land, and yet protect
their subjects and their goods. And so they did
combine, and there arose that curious state of affairs
between the foreigners and the people of the land
that has held for many years, that holds in no other
land, and that has crystallised in the Legation
Quarter of Peking.

Suppose in London all the great nations of the

58 A WOMAN IN CHINA

earth took a strip of the town, extending say from
Marble Arch to Hyde Park Corner, and from Park
Lane to Bond Street, held it and fortified it heavily,
barring out the inhabitants, not wholly, but by
certain regulations that prevented them having the
upper hand. The thing is unthinkable, yet that is
exactly what has happened in Peking. Against the
Tartar wall, from the Chien Men to the Ha Ta Men,
the nations have taken a parallelogram of ground all
but a mile square, they have heavily fortified it, on
three sides they have cleared a broad glacis on which
no houses may be built, and they have there a body
of troops with which they could overawe if not hold
all the town.

No man knows exactly how many men the
Japanese have, but supposing they are on a par with
the other nations, there are at least two thousand
five hundred men armed to the teeth and kept at
the highest pitch of perfection in the Legation
Quarter. Living there is like living in an armed
camp. You cannot go in or out without passing
forts or guns, in the streets you meet ammunition
wagons, baggage wagons, Red Cross wagons, and
at every turn are soldiers, soldiers of all the Euro-
pean nations that have any standing at all, soldiers
from America, soldiers from Japan; they are doing
sentry-go at the various Legations, they are drilling,
they are marching, they are shooting all day long.
In one corner of the British Legation they keep un-
touched a piece of the old shot- torn wall of 1900
and painted on it, in big black letters, is the legend,
" Lest We Forget," a reminder always, if the nations
needed a reminder, of the days of 1900, of the
terrible days that may be repeated any time this

ENTRANCE TO BRITISH LEGATION.

ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS ON THE WALL.

(Seepage 31)

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 59

peace-loving nation drifts into an anti-foreign out-
break. I was going to write it is almost insulting,
but it is insulting, and this armed Legation Quarter
must be in truth cruelly galling to the better-class,
educated Chinese. They must long to oust these
arrogant men from the West and their neighbour
from the East, who thus lord it over them in the
very heart of their own city. Even the wall, the
great Tartar wall built first by Kublai Khan, and
finished by the Ming conquerors, comes under
foreign domination from the Ha Ta Men to the
Chien Men. The watch-tower over the Ha Ta Men
is still in the hands of the Chinese, and like most
things Chinese is all out of repair. The red lacquer
is cracked, the gold is faded, the grass grows on the
tiled roofs, in the winter dried-up and faded, in the
summer lush and green, and for all the Chinese
soldiers hold it, it is desolate and a thing of the past.
But a hundred yards or so to the west, is the German
post. Always are armed men there with the eagle
on their helmets, always an armed sentry marches
up and down, keeping watch and ward. No great
need for them to hold the Ha Ta Men, their guns
dominate it, and below in the town the French hold
carefully the fortified eastern side of the Legation
Quarter. The centre of that strip of wall, held by
the Japanese, is marked by an iron fence called, I
am told, a "traverse." There is a gate in it, and
across the path to that gate, so that it may not be
so easily got through, is built up a little wall of brick
the height of a man. In the summertime the grass
grows on it green and fresh, and all the iron bars of
that fence and gate are wreathed in morning glory.
The Japanese are not so much in evidence as the

60 A WOMAN IN CHINA

efficient Germans or the smart Americans, but I am
told they are more than keen, and would gladly and
effectually hold the whole wall would the other
nations allow them. At the Chien Men, the western
end of the mile-long strip of wall are the Americans,
tall, lean, smart, capable men in khaki, with slouch
hats turned up at the sides, clean-shaven faces and
the sound in their voices that makes of their English
another tongue. In the troubles of 1912, when fires
were breaking out all over the city, and every
foreigner fled for safety to his Legation, Uncle Sam,
guarding the western end of the wall overlooking
those Legations, seized the beautiful new watch-
tower on the Chien Men, his soldiers established
themselves there, and they hold it still. It domin-
ates their Legation they say with reason, for their
own safety they must hold it, and the Chinese
acquiesce, not because they like it, but because they
must. Periodically representations come in, all is
quiet now, the Americans may as well give up the
main gate, or rather watch-tower, for they do not
hold the main gate, only the tower that overlooks it.
But the answer is always the same, it overlooks their
Legation, they must hold it. They have a wireless
telegraph post there and a block-house, and the regu-
lations for the sentry, couched in cold, calm, official
language, are an insult to the friendly nation that
gives them hospitality, or would be so, if that nation
had not shown itself incapable of controlling the
passions of its own aroused people. The sentry
clad in khaki in summer, in blue in winter, marching
up and down by the watch-tower, magnificent in its
gorgeous Eastern decorations of blue, and green, and
red, and barbaric gold, must report at once anything

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 61

unusual taking place in the gate below, any large
gathering of Chinese, any unusual commotion, but
above all upon that wall, that wall that belongs to
them and is the wall of their capital city, he must not
allow, without a permit, any Chinese. The word-
ing of the order runs, " No low-class Chinese," but
the definition of low class is left to the discretion of
the soldier, and he is not likely to risk a reproof from
those in authority over him by being too lax. With
my own eyes have I seen a Chinese, well-dressed
in European clothes, turned back by the sentry
from the ramp when he would have walked upon the
wall. He looked surprised, he was with European
friends, the order could not apply to him, but the
sentry was firm. He had his orders, " No Chinese,"
and without a special permit he must see them
carried out. It seemed cruel, and unnecessarily
humiliating, but on the central ramp are still the
places where the Americans, seeking some material
for a barricade, fighting to save themselves from a
ghastly death, tore out the bricks from the side of
the great wall. Other nations beside Britain, write
in their actions, if not on their walls : " Lest We
Forget! " The lower-class Chinese probably do not
mind the prohibition. It is considered bad manners
for a Chinaman to walk upon the wall, because
he thereby overlooks the private houses below, but
in these Says of the New Republic possibly good
manners are not so much considered as formerly,
and since the Chinese have never been allowed upon
the wall they probably do not realise that thirteen
miles of it are free to them, if they care to go there.
Some few I know do, because I have met there men
gathering the dried vegetation for fuel, and I have

62 A WOMAN IN CHINA

seen one or two beggars, long-haired, filthy men in
the frowsiest of rags, but the first have probably got
permission from the soldiers, and the latter, seeing
foreigners there, have most likely been tempted by
the hope of what to them is a lavish dole, and, finding
no harm happen, have come again. I may be
wrong, of course, but I hardly think death can have
much terror for the Chinese beggar, life must hold
so very little for him. Those who, having dared
their own portion of the wall with impunity, find
the foreign mile still a forbidden place to them,
probably put it in the same category as the For-
bidden City, and never realise that it is the outlander,
the outer barbarian, and not their own Government
that shuts them off.

But the holding of that wall by an armed force,
that dominates both the Chinese and the Tartar
Cities, seems to me the very greatest thing in the
way of insults. Some day when the Chinese are a
united nation, powerful as they ought to be, they
will awake to that insult, and the first thing they will
do will be to clear their wall from foreign inter-
ference. Meanwhile, as I sit in a courtyard of a
temple of the Western Hills, drinking in the
sparkling air of September, looking at the lovely
blue sky peeping through the dark green branches
of the temple pines, as I sit and write this book, I
think gratefully of that loose-limbed, lissom, athletic,
young American soldier who, with rifle across his
shoulder, is doing sentry-go upon the wall. The
German is there too, the stiff, well-drilled, military
German, but my heart goes out to the man who is
nearer akin, and whose speech is not unlike that of
the people of my own land. It seems to me I am

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 63

safe here, alone among the Chinese, because of those
soldiers. There are those who will say I am wrong,
that the Chinese are always courteous, and that they
like me because of the money I put into their
pockets. And that is true enough too. I have
found the very rickshaw coolie a finished, courteous
gentleman in his manner towards me, and I have
received many little acts of kindness which could
but come from a kindly heart, with no thought of
profit behind it; but still, deep down at the bottom
of my heart, I know that the Chinese, more than
any man on earth perhaps, respects power, and the
Legation Quarter, and the holding of that wall, are
an outward manifestation of power that reaches far
and keeps me safe here in my mountain temple.
The gods here by my side are dead, who fears or
respects the gods, Spanish chestnuts are stored
beside their altars, but the foreign soldiers on
the wall are a fact there is no getting over. It
impresses those in authority, and the fiat goes forth,
permeating through all classes, " The foreigner is
not to be touched under any circumstances what-

ever."

On this wall come the foreign community to
exercise and promenade in the cool of the evening
in summer, or to enjoy the sunshine at midday in
winter, and here all the soldiers and sailors of the
various nationalities foregather. There is no other
place in all Peking where one can walk with com-
fort, for the Chinese as a nation, have no idea of
the joy of exercise. They have put it out of the
power of their women to move save with difficulty,
and that a man should take any pleasure in violent
exercise seems to them absurd. To walk when he

64 A WOMAN IN CHINA

can ride in a rickshaw, or mount a donkey, would
argue something- wrong in his mental outlook, so
it happens that, in all the great city, there are
only the streets of the Legation Quarter and the
wall where walking exercise can be indulged in.
The streets of the Quarter are the streets of an
uninteresting, commonplace town, but the wall
overlooking the two cities is quite another matter.
Here the part of the foreign community that does
not ride takes its exercise, and foregathers with its
kind.

The foreign quarter is not always thinking of the
dangers it is guarding against. That it thinks also
a great deal of its amusement, goes without saying.
I have observed that this is a special characteristic
of the Briton abroad. At home the middle-class
man — or woman — is chary of pleasure, taking it as
if it were something he had hardly a right to ; but
abroad he seizes eagerly the smallest opportunity
for amusing himself, demanding amusement as
something that hardly compensates him for his exile
from his native land. So it has come that I, a
looker-on, with less strong bonds than those from
the Old Country binding me to my father's land,
fancy that these exiles have in the end a far better
time than the men of the same class who stay
at home. I am apt to have no pity for them
whatever.

One thing is certain, people keep horses here in
Peking who could not dream of such a luxury in
England. True, they are only ponies fourteen
hands high, but a great deal of fun can be got out
of pony racing. And racing-stables are a feature of
the Quarter. Not that they are in the Quarter.

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 65

On the plain, about five miles to the west of the
city, lies the little race-course, and dotted about
within easy distance of this excellent training-ground
are the various training-stables for the ponies. The
China pony comes from Mongolia, where close
watch and ward is kept over him, and neither mares
nor stallions are exported.

"HI could only get hold of a mare," sighs the
young racing man, but he sighs in vain. Mean-
while he can indulge in the sport of kings cheaply.

" I've joined another fellow in a racing-stable,"
said a man to me, soon after my arrival in Peking,
and I looked upon him with something of the awe
and respect one gives to great wealth. I had not
thought he was so well off. He saw my mistake
and laughed.

"The preliminary expenses are only thirty
pounds," he went on, " and I don't intend they shall
be very heavy. We can have good sport at a
moderate cost." Of course moderate cost is an
elastic term, depending on the purse of the speaker,
but in this case I think it meant that men of very
ordinary means, poor exiles who would live in a
six-roomed flat with a couple of maidservants in
England, might have a good time without straining
those means unduly.

A race-meeting in Peking has peculiarities all its
own. Of course it is only the men from the West
who would think of a race-meeting. The Chinese,
except at the theatre, do not amuse themselves in
crowds.

The Spring Meeting took place early in May,
and the description of it should come a little later
in my book, but it seems to fall naturally into

£

66 A WOMAN IN CHINA

the story of the doings of the Legation Quarter.
Arrangements were made with the French railway
running to Hankow to stop close to the course, and
put the race-going crowd down there. There was
no other means of getting there, except by riding ;
for driving in a country where every inch of ground,
save a narrow and rough track, is given over to the
needs of agriculture, is out of the question. That
spring race-meeting the day was ideal. There was
the blue sky overhead, the brilliant sunshine, a
gentle breeze to temper it, the young kaoliang was
springing, lush and green, in the fields, and the
ash-trees that shelter the race-course were one
delicate tender green. A delicious day. Could
the heart of man desire more? Apparently the
foreign residents of Peking did not desire more, for
they turned out, men, women, and children. And
then I saw what a handful of people are these
foreigners who live in the capital of China and
endeavour to direct her destinies, for save and
except the missionary element, most of the other
foreigners were there, from his Britannic Majesty's
representative to the last little boy who had joined
a hong as junior clerk at a hundred dollars a month,
and felt that the cares of Empire were on his
shoulders. They were mostly British, of course,
the foreign trade of China — long may it be so — is
mostly in British hands ; and there were representa-
tives of every other great nation, the Ministers
of France, Germany, Russia, of Italy, Austria,
Spain, Belgium, Holland, and Japan, everyone
but America, for America was busy recognising
the Chinese Republic, and the other nations were
smiling, and wondering why the nation that prides

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 67

itself on being the champion of freedom for the
people, was being the first to recognise what is,
virtually, a despotic rule.

The little course, a mile round, is marked out with
leafy ash-trees, the grand-stand was charming with
lilac bloom purple and white, and banksia roses,
fragrant as tender memories. It was shaded by
p'engs — mats — raised high on scaffolding, so that
pleasant shade might not interfere with the cool
breeze, and here were the women of the community,
the women of well-to-do people, gay in dainty toilets
from London and Paris ; the men were in light
summer suits, helmets and straw hats, for summer
was almost upon us. Tiffin, the luncheon of the
East, was set in the rooms behind, decorated with
miniature flags of all nations, made in Japan, and
wreathed with artificial flowers, though there was
a wealth of natural blossom around the stand out-
side. There is a steward's room and the weighing-
room in one tiny building with a curved roof of
artistic Chinese design, and all the ponies are
walked about and saddled and mounted where every
interested spectator can see them. And every spec-
tator on that sunny May day was interested, for the
horses, the sturdy Chinese ponies, were, and always
are, owned and ridden by the men of the company,
men whom everybody knows intimately. For these
Peking race-meetings are only amateur, and though,
occasionally, a special pony may change hands at
two thousand dollars — two hundred pounds — the
majority are bought and sold under two hundred
dollars — twenty pounds — and yet their owners have
much joy and pride in them.

Surely it is unique, a race-meeting where all the

68 A WOMAN IN CHINA

civilised nations of the earth meet and fraternise in
simple, friendly fashion, taking a common pleasure
in small things.

"They're off!" Mostly the exclamation was in
English, but a Russian-owned horse, ridden by a
Cossack rider, won one race, and was led proudly
up to the weighing-room by a fair lady of his own
people, and was cordially applauded, for the
winner was always applauded, no matter what his
nationality.

The horses, coming out to parade, were each led
by their own mafoo, who managed to look horsey
in spite of a shaven head, long queue, and pro-
nounced Chinese features. Up and down they led
the ponies, up and down, and when at last the
precious charges must be resigned, a score of them
squatted down just where they could get the best
view of the race, and doubtless each man put up a
little prayer to the god he most affected, that the
pony that carried his money might come in first.

When we were not watching the saddling, or the
parade, or the race, or the weighing-in, we were
listening to a Chinese band, Sir Robert Bredon's
band, with a Chinese conductor, playing selections
from all the modern Western music. It might have
been — where in the world might it not have been?
Nowhere but in Peking in the heart of China surely,
for there, just beyond the limit of the course, were
long strings of camels bound for coal to the Western
Hills, marching steadily, solemnly, tirelessly, as
they marched in the days of Marco Polo, and a
thousand years before the days of Marco Polo,
and all round the course, crowding every point of
vantage were a large concourse of Chinese, people

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 69

of the working and middle classes, clad mostly in
blue, the women with bound feet from the farms
near by, the men and the children very likely from
further afield, but all unchanging as the camels
themselves, eagerly watching the foreigners' sports.
They are not allowed to come into the enclosure,
every mafoo and attendant wears a special badge,
and even Chinese of the better class may come
only by special invitation of some member. These
interested folk, who have no friends among the
foreigners may not even go into the enclosure,
where the " Tommies " and bluejackets, men from
England and America, France, Japan, and all the
countries of the earth crowded in the gay sunshine
making high holiday. Nevertheless the Orientals
surrounded the course. They got upon the mounds
of earth that are at the back and looked from that
vantage-point not only at the races but at the foreign
devils at their tiffin and afternoon tea. Their own
refreshment was provided by hawkers selling cakes
and sweetmeats, just outside the forbidden ground,
and Peking carts and donkeys waited round to take
them back to their homes. There were even
beggars there, beggars with long, unkempt hair,
wrapped in a single garment of sackcloth, ragged,
unwashed, unkempt, the typical beggars of China,
for no one knows better than they when money is
being lightly handled, and as the bright sunny day,
the gorgeous spring day of Northern China drew
slowly to a close doubtless even they, whom every
man's hand was against, gathered in a few stray
cash. I hope they did. Such a very little makes
so much difference in China.

The sun sank slowly to the west in the translucent

70 A WOMAN IN CHINA

sky, the ponies in the saddling paddock were walked
slowly up and down in the long shadows of the ash-
trees, and the country was beautiful with the soft
regret of the dying day as we walked back through
the fields of kaoliang to the railway station, we, the
handful of people who represented the power and
majesty of the Western world. The mighty walls
of an older civilisation frowned down upon the train
— this thing of yesterday — the last rays of the setting
sun lighted up all the glory of the red and gold of
the Chien Men watch-tower and we were in the
Legation Quarter once more, with armed sentries at
the gates, and the American soldier upon the wall
sounding the bugle call for the changing guard.

I come from a country where every little township
considers a race-course as necessary as a cemetery.
I have been to many many race-meetings, but this
one in Peking, where the men of the land are so
barred out that no one of Chinese descent may
belong to the Club or even ride a race, stands out
as unique. It has a place in my mind by itself. It
was so expressive of the attitude of the Powers who
watch over China. Peking, the Peking of the
Legations had been amusing herself. The National
Assembly was in an uproar, the Premier was openly
accused of murder, the Loan was in anything but a
satisfactory state, everyone feared that the North
and the South would be at each other's throats
before the month was out, the air was full of rumours
of wars, but the English-speaking community love
racing, the other nations, from their Ministers
downwards, had fallen into line, and Peking, foreign
Peking, did itself well.

And I wondered, I wondered much what the

SOUTH-EASTERN WATCH-TOWER, PEKING,

i. sTL

A FORT OF THE BRITISH LEGATION.

LEGATION QUARTER OP PEKING 71

Chinese thought of it all. It is very, very difficult,
so men tell me who have lived in China long, and
speak the language well, to get at the bottom of the
Chinese mind, to know what they really do think of
us. The Chinese gentleman is so courteous that
as far as possible he always expresses the opinion
he thinks you would like to hear, and the Chinese
woman, even if she be of the better classes, with
very few exceptions is unlearned and ignorant as
a child, indeed she is worse than a child of the
Western nations, for the child is at least allowed to
ask questions and learn, while all her charm is
supposed to depend upon her subservience and her
ignorance. As I stood on the race-course that day,
and many a time as I sat in the lounge of the Wagons
Lits Hotel — the European hotel of the Legation
Quarter — where all tourists visiting Peking come,
where the nations of the world foregather, and East
meets West as never before perhaps in the world's
history have they met, I have wondered very much
indeed what the East, the portly middle-aged China-
man with flowing silken robes and long queue thinks
of us and our manners and customs. He was
accompanied perhaps by a friend, or perhaps by a
lady in high collar and trousers with a little son,
the crown of the child's head shaven, and the
remaining hair done in a halo of little plaits tied up
with string, yellow, red, or blue, and he watched
gravely either the dancing, or the conversation, or
the conjurer, or whatever other amusement the
"Wagons Lits" had for the time being set up.
Again and again have I watched him, but I could
never even make a guess at what he thought.
Probably it was anything but complimentary.

72 A WOMAN IN CHINA

" The men dressed for dinner," said a Chinese
once, describing an evening he had spent among
foreigners; "then the order was given and the
women stripped," that is took off their wraps when
the music began, only everything is "ordered" in
China, " and each man seized a woman in his arms.
He pushed her forward, he pulled her back,"
graphic illustrations were given, "he whirled round
and round and she had no will of her own. And it
was all done to horrible music."

Everything is in the point of view, and that is
how, at least one Chinese gentleman saw a waltz.
I used to wonder what he said of the musical comedy
that from time to time is presented by a wandering
company in the dining-room of the Wagons Lits
Hotel. They displayed upon a tiny crowded stage,
for the edification of Chinese and foreigners alike,
for the room was crowded with Chinese both of the
old and of the new order, such a picture of morals
as Europeans take as a matter of course. We know
well enough that such scenes as are depicted in
" The Girl in the Taxi " are merely the figments of
an exuberant imagination, and are not the daily
habits of any class either in London or Paris. But
what do the Chinese think? All things are neces-
sary and good, I suppose, but some are difficult to
explain. Thirteen years ago the Boxer tragedy,
now the musical comedy full of indecencies scarcely
veiled.

Truth to tell, it was a very interesting thing for
a new-comer like me to sit in that hotel watching
the people, and listening to the various opinions so
freely given by all and sundry. From all parts of
the world people come there, tourists, soldiers,

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 78

sailors, business men, philanthropists — men who
were working for the good of China, and men who
were ready to exploit her. And then the opinions
as to the safety of the Europeans in China that were
expressed! Here, in the security of the Legation
Quarter, I collected those opinions as I wanted to
go into the interior, and I was by no means anxious
to risk my life.

To arrive at any decision was very difficult. In
the Treaty Ports there may be some unanimity, but
once outside it seemed that every man had his own
particular opinion of China and the Chinese, and
all these opinions differed widely.

" Safe," said a man who had fought through the
Boxer trouble ; " safer far than London. They had
to pay then, and they won't forget, you can take
your oath of that."

" Like living on a volcano," said another. " No,
I shall never forget the Boxer trouble. That's the
kind of thing that is graved on your mind with hot
irons. Do it again? Of course they'll do it again.
A docile people, I grant you, but they're very
fiends when they're aroused. They're emotional,
you know, the French of the Far East, and when

they let themselves go " He paused, and I

realised that he had seen them let themselves go,
and no words could describe the horror of it.
"Would I let my wife and children live in one of
the hu t'ungs of Peking? Would I? How would
they get away when the trouble commenced ? "

The chances are they couldn't get away. The
hu t'ungs of Peking are narrow alley-ways running
out from the main thoroughfares, and the houses
there are built, Chinese fashion, round courtyards

74 A WOMAN IN CHINA

and behind blank walls, hidden away in a nest of
other buildings, and the difficulty of getting out and
back to the armed Legation Quarter, when a mob
were out bent on killing, would be enormous.

"A Debt Commission spells another anti-foreign
outbreak, and we're within an ace of a Debt Com-
mission," said another man thoughtfully; "and if
there is a row and things look like going against us,
I keep one cartridge in my revolver for myself." It
does not seem much when I write it down, such
things have I heard carelessly said many a time
before, but when I, a foreigner and a solitary woman,
was contemplating a trip up-country, they had a
somewhat sinister sound.

On the other hand again and again have I heard
men scout all idea of danger, men who have been
up and down the country for years. And yet but
yesterday, the day before I write these words, a man
looked at his pretty young wife, she was sweetly
pretty, and vowed vehemently, " I would not leave
my wife and child alone for a night in our house
just outside the Quarter for anything on earth. If

anything did happen — and it might " and he

dropped his voice. There are some things that will
not bear thinking about, and he had seen the looting
of Nanking and the unfortunates who had died when
they took the Woosung Forts. " We went to look
after the wounded," said he, " and there weren't
any wounded. The savage Northern soldiery had
seen to that." And those whom they mutilated
were their own people! What would they do to a
foreigner in the event of an anti-foreign outbreak ?

" Are you afraid ? " I asked a man who certainly
lived far enough away in the city.

LEGATION QUARTER OF PEKING 75

He looked at me curiously, as if he were going
to say there was nothing to be afraid of, and then he
changed his mind.

" Perhaps I am when I think of it," said he ; " but
then you see, I don't think of it."

And that is the average attitude, the necessary
attitude, because no man can perpetually brood over
the dangers that might assail him. Certain pre-
cautions he takes to safeguard himself, here are the
nations armed to the teeth in the heart of a friendly
country, and for the rest Quien sabe?

And I talked with all men, and while I was
making preparations to go into the interior, had the
good-fortune to see a quaint and curious pageant
that took me back to Biblical days and made me
remember how Vashti the Queen was cast down,
and the beautiful Esther found favour in the sight
of her lord, and how another tragic Hebrew Queen,
going down to posterity with a name unjustly
smirched and soiled, had once painted her face and
tired her head, and looking out of the window had
defied to the death her unfaithful servant. " Had
Zimri peace who slew his master ? "

CHAPTER V

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS

A good republican — The restricted Empire of the Manchus —
Condign punishment — Babylon — An Adventurous Chinaman —
The entrance to the Forbidden City — The courtyards of Baby-
lon— A discordant and jarring note — Choirs of priests — A
living Buddha — " The Swanee River " — The last note in
bathos — Palace eunuchs — Out of hand — Afternoon tea — The
funeral procession — The imperial bier — Quaint and strange
and Eastern.

THE Dowager- Empress of China, the unloved wife
and widow of the late Emperor, died, so they gave
out to the world, on the 22nd February, 1913, the
day I arrived in China. As Empress, just one of
the women of the Court chosen to please the ruler
and to bear him children, his consort in China never
seems to have had any particular standing. This
Empress was overshadowed by her aunt, the great
Dowager-Empress whom all the world knew, but
once the Emperor was dead, as one of the guardians
of the baby Emperor she came into a certain amount
of power, for the position of Dowager- Empress
seems to be an official one as, since her death,
another woman who has never been wife to an
Emperor has been appointed to the post.

The power has gone from the Manchus, but China
is wedded to her past, nothing passes, so even the
Chinese Republic, the men who barely a year before

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 77

had ousted the Empress from her high estate, united
in doing her honour at her obsequies.

" She was the best republican of us all," said a
Chinese gentleman, learned in the lore and civilisa-
tion of the West, " for she freely gave up her position
that China might be free."

It was a pretty way of putting it, but to me it seems
doubtful whether anyone in over-civilised China
trammelled with many conventions, is free, and it is
hardly likely that a woman bred to think she had
attained the most important position in the world
that can fall to a woman's lot, would give it up freely
for the good of a people she knew absolutely nothing
about. All the Manchus rule over now are the
courtyards and palaces of the Forbidden City, and
there they are supreme. It is whispered that only a
week before the day of which I write, a man was
there beaten to death for having stolen something
belonging to the dead Empress. So much for the
love of the Manchus for freedom and enlightenment.
It carries one back to the Middle Ages — further, to
Babylon.

They slew there mercilessly, and they also feasted
— so did the representatives of the dead Empress
hold high festival in her honour.

" The King made a feast unto all the people that
were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great
and small, seven days, in the Court in the garden of
the King's palace.

"Where were white, green, and blue hangings
fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver
rings and pillars of marble, the beds were of gold
and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and
white, and black marble.

78 A WOMAN IN CHINA

"And they gave them drink in vessels of gold
. . . and royal wine in abundance, according to the
state of the King."

So Ahasuerus the King entertained his people of
Babylon, when Vashti the Queen fell, and of Baby-
lon only could I think when, first I entered the
Forbidden City.

Standing on the walls of Peking, a city of the
plain, you look down upon twelve square miles of
grey-tiled roofs, the roofs of one-storied houses
hidden in the summertime by a forest of trees, but
in the heart of the city are high buildings that stand
out not only by reason of their height but because
the roofs of golden-brown tiles, imperial yellow,
gleam and glow in the sunlight. This is the For-
bidden City where has dwelt for hundreds of years
the Emperor of China, often he must have been the
only man in it, and always it was closed to all save
the immediate following of the Son of Heaven.

I never realised till I came to Peking that this
forbidden ground was just as much an object of
curiosity to the Chinese as it would have been to
any European nation.

" I went in once," said a Chinese gentleman to
me, "when I was a young man." He was only
forty then.

" Were you invited ? "

" No, no. I went secretly. I wanted to see what
it was like."

"But how?"

" I got the dress of a eunuch and I slipped in early
one morning, and then, when I got in, I hardly dared
move or breathe for fear someone should find me
out. Then when no one took any notice of me I

PEKING FROM THE WALL IN WINTER.

ENTRANCE TO THE FORBIDDEN CITY.

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 79

walked about and saw everything I could, but the
last hour was the worst, I was terrified at the thought
that I might not be able to get out."

" And if you had been caught ? "

He looked grave even then at the remembrance
of that bygone desperate adventure.

" Oh death, certainly."

"Death?"

" Yes, a long and lingering death," and the
thought of what he had escaped twenty years ago,
was on his face.

I looked at him with interest, a tall stout China-
man with his hair cut short in the modern fashion,
a long grey robe of silk reaching to his feet, and a
little short black sleeveless jacket over it. He did not
look, pleasant as he was, as if he would ever have
dared anything, but then I have never thought of
any Chinaman as likely to risk his life without hope
of gain, and to risk it for mere curiosity as a man of
my own people might have done! It was throwing
a new light on the Chinese. I rather admired him
and then I found he was Eastern after all.

We talked of Yuan Shih K'ai, and he, being of
the opposition party, expressed his opinion freely,
and, considering all things, very boldly about
him.

" He has eighteen wives," said he shaking his head
as if this was the unpardonable sin in a man who
desired to imitate the manners and customs of the
West.

I repeated this to a friend, and he burst out laugh-
ing. " Why the old sinner," said he, " what's he
throwing stones for? He's got seventeen and a half
himself!"

80 A WOMAN IN CHINA

So it seems it will be some time before forbidden
cities on a small scale will be out of fashion in China.

And still, in these days of the Republic, the For-
bidden City of the Manchus dominates Peking.

It was thrown open for three days to all who could
produce a black paper chrysanthemum with five
leaves, red, yellow, blue, black, and white, fastened
to a tab of white paper with a mourning edge and an
inscription in Chinese characters. The foreigners
had theirs from their Legations, and the Chinese
from their guilds. And those Chinese — there are
many of them — who are so unlucky as to belong to
no guild, Chinese of the humbler sort, were shut out,
and for them there was erected on the great marble
bridge in front of the southern entrance, a pavilion
of gorgeous orange silk enclosing an altar with offer-
ings that stood before a picture of the dead Empress,
so that all might pay their respects.

I pinned my badge to the front of my fur coat,
for it was keen and cold in spite of the brilliant sun-
shine, and went off to the wrong entrance, the
eastern gate, where only princes and notables were
admitted. I thought it strange there should be no
sign of a foreigner, but foreigners in Peking can
be but as one in a hundred or less, so undismayed,
I walked straight up to the gate, and immediately a
row of palace servants clad in their white robes of
mourning, clustered before the sacred place. They
talked and explained vehemently, and with perfect
courtesy, but they were very agitated, and though I
could not understand one word they said, one thing
was certain, admitted I could not be there. So I
turned to the southern gate and there it seemed all
Peking was streaming.

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 81

It was like China that we might not go in the
direct way.

There is a great paved way through the Imperial
City alongside a canal that runs between marble-
lined banks, but on the principal bridge that crosses
it was erected the orange silk pavilion for the poorer
classes, and we, the wearers of the black chrysan-
themum, hundreds and thousands and ten thousands
of us, had to turn off to the right and go along by the
tall, pinkish red walls till we came to the great arch-
ways in the walls, five great archways filled in with
doors studded with great brazen knobs. Usually
they were fast shut, but they were open to-day,
guarded by soldiers in full-marching order, soldiers
of the New Republic in modern khaki looking out
of the picture, and there streamed into the tunnel-
like entrance as curious a crowd as ever I set eyes
upon. All must walk, old and young, great and
lowly, representatives of the mighty nations of the
world and tottering Chinese ladies swaying like
"lilies in the wind" upon their maimed feet, only
one man, a Mongol Prince, an Incarnation of a
Buddha, a living Buddha, was borne in in a sedan
chair. But every other mortal had to walk. The
tunnels must always be gloomy, and, even on that
cold day, they struck chill after the brilliant sunlight,
and they are long, for the walls, just here, are
about ninety feet through, so might the entrances
have been in the palace of Ahasuerus the King. The
courtyard we first entered had a causeway running
right across it of great hewn stones, hewn and laid
by slave labour, when all men bowed before the Son
of Heaven, hundreds of years ago. They are worn
in many places now, worn by the passing of many

F

82 A WOMAN IN CHINA

feet, and still more worn are the grey Chinese bricks
that pave the courtyard on either side. It is a great
courtyard of splendid proportions. In front of us
frowned more high walls of pinkish red, topped by
the buildings that can be seen all over Peking,
temples or halls of audience with golden-brown tiled
roofs that gleamed in the sunlight, and on either side
were low buildings with fronts of lattice-work rather
fallen into disrepair. They might have been used
as guard-houses or, more probably, were the quarters
of the six thousand or so of eunuchs that the dignity
of the ruler required to attend upon him. There
were a few treesA leafless then in March, but there
was nothing to spoil the dignity and repose of every
line. A great mind surely conceived this entrance,
and great must have been the minds that kept it so
severely simple. If it be the heart of a nation then
do I understand. The people who streamed along
the causeway, who roamed over the worn brick
pavement, had, as a rule, delicate, finely formed
hands though they were but humble craftsmen. If
the hands of the poorest be so fine, is it any wonder
that the picked men of such a people, their very
heart, conceived such a mighty pile? There were
more, longer and gloomier tunnels, admitting to a
still greater courtyard, a courtyard that must be at
least a quarter of a mile across, with the same cause-
way of worn stones that cry out the tale of the suffer-
ings of the forgotten slaves, who hewed them and
dragged them into place, the same grey pavement
of bricks, the same tall smooth red walls, crowned
over the gateway with temples, rising one story after
another till the tiled roof cuts the sky. And through
a third set of tunnels we came into a third courtyard,

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 83

the courtyard where the obsequies were being held.
The third courtyard was spacious as Trafalgar
Square, and round three sides was a wide raised
platform of stone reached by broad and easy ramps,
and all across it ran a canal held in by marble banks,
crossed by graceful bridges, and every one of the
uprights, made of white marble, was crowned by a
figure that I took for the representation of a flame ;
but those, who know, tell me it is meant to represent
a cloud, and is part of the dragon symbolism. When
marble is the medium by which so light a thing as a
cloud is represented it must be very finely done
indeed, when one outside the national thought, such
as I, sees in that representation a flame. Two
colossal bronze monsters with grinning countenances
and curly manes, conventional lions, mounted on
dragon-carved pedestals, stand before the entrance
to the fourth temple or hall of audience, and here
was what the crowd had come to see, the light-
hearted, cheerful, merry crowd, that were making
high holiday, here was the altar to the dead.

Overhead were the tiled roofs, and of all the
colours of the rainbow surely none could have been
chosen better than the golden brown of those tiles
to harmonise with the clear blue of the glorious sky
above it, no line to cut it could have been so appro-
priate as the gentle sweep of the curve of a Chinese
roof. There was a little grass growing on the roofs,
sere and withered, but a faint breeze just stirred its
tops, and it toned with the prevailing golden brown
in one glorious beauty. Where else in the world
could one get such an effect? Only in Australia
have I seen such a sky, and there it was never
wedded to such a glow of colour as that it looks down

84 A WOMAN IN CHINA

upon in Peking. The men who built this palace in
a bygone age, built broadly, truly, for all time.

And then, it was surely as if some envious spirit
had entered in and marred all this loveliness — no,
that would be impossible, but struck a discordant and
jarring note that should perhaps emphasise in our
minds the beauty that is eternal — for all the front of
that temple, which as far as I could see was pinkish
red, with under the eaves that beautiful dark blue,
light blue, and green, that the Chinese know so well
how to mingle, was covered with the most garish,
commonplace decorations, made for the most part of
paper, red, violent Reckitt's blue, yellow, and white.
From every point of vantage ran strings of flags,
cheap common little flags of all nations, bits of
string were tied to |the marble clouds, and they
fluttered from them, and the great wonderful bronze
lions contrived to look coy in frills that would not
have disgraced a Yorkshire ham. The altar on the
northern platform was hidden behind a trellis-work
of gaily coloured paper, and there were offerings
upon it of fruit and cakes in great profusion, all set
out before a portrait of the late Empress. On
either side were two choirs of priests, Buddhists and
Taoists in gorgeous robes of red and orange. What
faith the dead Empress held I do not know, but the
average Chinese, while he is the prince of material-
ists, believing nothing he cannot see and explain,
has also a keen eye to the main chance, and on his
death-bed is apt to summon priests of all faiths so
as to let no chance of a comfortable future slip ; but
possibly it was more from motives of policy than
from any idea of aiding the dead woman that these
representatives of the two great faiths of China were

A PATH IN THE GROUNDS OF THE WINTER PALACE.

A SECLUDED CORNER OF THE WINTER PALACE.

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 85

summoned. On the right^ behind a trellis-work of
bright paper, one choir sat in a circle, beat gongs,
struck their bells and intoned; and on the left,
behind a like trellis-work, the other choir knelt before
low desks and also solemnly intoned. Their Mon-
golian faces were very impassive, they looked neither
to the right nor the left, but kept time to the cease-
less beat of their leader's stick upon a globe of wood
split across the middle like a gaping mouth emblem-
atical of a fish and called mu yii — or wooden fish.
What were they repeating? Prayers for the dead?
Eulogies on her who had passed? Or comfort for
the living? Not one of these things. Probably
they were intoning Scriptures in Tibetan, an un-
known tongue to them very likely, but come down
to them through the ages and sanctified by thousands
of ceaseless repetitions.

And the people came, passed up the steps, bowed
by the direction of the usher — in European clothes —
three times to the dead Empress's portrait, and the
altar, were thanked by General Chang, the Military
Commandant, and passed on by the brightly clad
intoning priests down into the crowd in the great
courtyard again. It was weird to find myself taking
part in such a ceremony. Stranger still to watch the
people who went up and down those steps. In all
the world surely never was such an extraordinary
funeral gathering. I am very sure that never shall
I attend such another. There was such a mingling
of the ancient and the blatantly modern. To the
sound of weird, archaic, Eastern music the living
Buddha, clad all in yellow, in his yellow sedan chair,
borne by four bearers in dark blue with Tartar caps
on their heads, made his reverence, and was followed

86 A WOMAN IN CHINA

by a band of Chinese children from some American
mission school, who, with misguided zeal sang fer-
vently at the top of their shrill childish voices
" Down by the Swanee River " and " Auld Lang
Syne," and then soldiers in modern uniform of
khaki or bright blue were followed by police officers
in black and gold. The wrong note was struck by
the " Swanee River," the high officials dwelt upon it,
for the Chinese does not look to advantage in these
garbs, he looks what he is^ makeshift, a bad imita-
tion, and the jarring was only relieved when the
Manchu princes came in white mourning sheepskins
and black Tartar caps. They may be dissolute and
decadent, have all the vices that new China accuses
them of, but at least they looked polished and
dignified gentlemen, at their ease and in their place.
It does not matter, possibly. The President once
said that to petition for a monarchy was an act of
fanaticism worthy of being punished by imprison-
ment, and so the old order must in a measure pass ;
even in China, the unchanging, there must come, it
is a law of nature, some little change, and when I
looked at the bows and arrows of the Manchu guard
leaning against the wall I realised that it would be
impossible to keep things as they were, however
picturesque. Still khaki uniforms, if utilitarian, are
ugly, and American folk-songs, under such condi-
tions, struck the last note in bathos, or pathos. It
depends on the point of view.

On the white paper tabs, attached to our black
chrysanthemums, was written something about the
New Republic, but it might have been the spirit of
the Empress at home, so cheerful and bent on
enjoyment was the crowd which thronged the

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 87

courtyard. The bands played, sometimes Eastern
music, strange and haunting, sometimes airs from
the European operas, there were various tents
erected with seats and tables, and refreshments were
served, oranges, and ginger, and tea, and cakes of
all kinds, both in the tents and at little altar-like
stands dotted about the courtyard even at the very
foot of the pedestals of the great conventional lions.
And the people walked round looking at everything,
peeping through every crevice in the hopes of seeing
some part of the palace that was not open to them,
chatting, laughing, greeting each other as they
would have done at a garden-party in Europe.
There were all sorts of people, dressed in all sorts
of fashions. New China looked at best common-
place and ordinary in European clothes ; old China
was dignified in a queue, silken jacket and brocaded
petticoat, generally of a lighter colour; Manchu
ladies wore high head-dresses and brilliant silken
coats, blue or pink, lavender or grey, and Chinese
ladies tottered along on tiny, bound feet that
reminded me of the hoofs of a deer, and the most
fashionable, unmarried girls wore short coats with
high collars covering their chins, and tight-fitting
trousers, often of gaily coloured silk, while the older
women added skirts, and the poorer classes just
wore a long coat of cotton, generally blue, with
trousers tightly girt in at the ankles, and their
maimed feet in tiny little embroidered shoes.
European dress the Chinese woman very seldom
affects yet, and their jet black hair, plastered
together with some sort of substance that makes
it smooth and shiny, is never covered, but flowers
and jewelled pins are stuck in it. Occasionally — I

88 A WOMAN IN CHINA

did on this day — you will see a woman with a black
embroidered band round the front of her head, but
this, I think, denotes that she is of the Roman
Catholic faith, for the Roman Catholics have been in
China far longer than any other Christian sect, and
they invented this head-dress for the Chinese woman
who for ages has been accustomed to wear none,
because of the Pauline injunction, that it was a
shame for a woman to appear in a church with her
head uncovered. Old China did not approve of a
woman going about much at all, and here at this
funeral I heard many old China hands remarking
how strange it was to see so many women mingling
with the throng. It marked the change ; but such a
very short time back, such a thing would have been
impossible.

There were numbers of palace eunuchs too —
keepers of the women who, apparently, may now
show their faces to all men, and they were clad all
in the mourning white, with here and there one, for
some reason or other I cannot fathom, in black.
The demand for eunuchs was great when the
Emperor dwelt, the one man, in the Forbidden City
surrounded by his women, and they say that very
often the number employed rose to ten thousand.
Constantly, as some in the ranks grew old, fell sick,
or died, they had to be replaced, and, so conserva-
tive is China, the recruits were generally drawn from
certain villages whose business it was to supply the
palace eunuchs. Often, of course, the operation
was performed in their infancy, but often, very often,
a man was allowed to grow up, marry, and have
children, before he was made ready for the palace.

" Impossible," I said, " he would not consent

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 89

then. Never." And my informant laughed piti-
fully. " Ah," said she, " you don't know the struggle
in China. Anything for a livelihood."

Some of the eunuchs wanted their photographs
taken, and I was willing enough if they would only
give me room. I wanted one in white, but they
desired one in black, either because he was the most
important or the least important, I know not which,
and they sat him on a stone that had been a seat
perhaps when Kublai Khan built the palace ; and
the keeper of the women, the representative of the
old cruel past, that pressed men and women alike
into the service of the great, looked in my camera
sheepish as a schoolboy kissed in public by his
maiden aunt.

There were coolies, too, in the ordinary blue
cotton busy about the work that the entertaining of
such a multitude necessarily entails, and everyone
looked cheerful and happy, as, after all, why should
they not, for death is the common lot, and must
come to all of us, and they had seen and heard of
the dead Empress about as much as the dweller in
Chicago had. They were merely taking what she,
or her representatives, gave with frank goodwill,
and enjoying themselves accordingly.

Against the walls they kept putting up long scrolls
covered with Chinese characters, sentences in praise
of the virtues of the Empress, and sent, as we would
send funeral wreaths, to honour the dead, and
presently a wind arose and tore at them and they
fluttered out from the walls like long streamers, and
as the wind grew wilder, some were torn down
altogether. But that was on the afternoon of the
second day, when worse things happened.

90 A WOMAN IN CHINA

I went down to the Forbidden City after tiffin,
and behold, outside the great gates, looking up
longingly and murmuring a little, was a great
crowd that grew momentarily greater. The doors,
studded with brazen nails, were fast closed, and
little parties of soldiers with their knapsacks upon
their backs were evidently telling the crowd to keep
back, and very probably, since it was China, the
reason why they should keep back. The reason
was, of course, lost upon me, I only knew that,
before I realised what was happening, I was in the
centre of a crushing crowd that was gradually
growing more unmanageable. A Chinese crowd is
wonderfully good-natured, far better-tempered than
a European crowd of a like size would be, but when
a crowd grows great, it is hardly responsible for its
actions. Besides, a Chinese crowd has certain
little unpleasant habits. The men picked up the
little children, for the tiniest tots came to this great
festival, and held them on their shoulders, but they
coughed, and hawked, and spit, and wiped their
noses in the primitive way Adam probably did
before he thought of using a fig-leaf as a pocket
handkerchief, and at last I felt that the only thing
to be done was to edge my way to the fringe of the
press, because, even if the doors were opened, it
would have seemed like taking my life in my hands
to go into one of those tunnels with their uneven
pavements in such a crush. Once down it would
be hopeless to think of getting up again.

After a time, however, they did open the doors,
and the people surged in. When all was clear I
followed, and once inside heard how the people in
the great courtyard, in spite of police and soldiers,

CAMELS IN MORRISON STREET.

MAKING CAKES, STREET IN PEKING.

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 91

had swarmed up and threatened by their rush, the
good-natured, purposeless rush of a crowd, to carry
away offerings, altar, choirs and decorations, and,
very naturally, those in authority had closed the
doors against all new-comers until the people had
been got well in hand again. It had taken some
time. Before the altar was a regular scrimmage,
and after the crowd had passed it left behind it,
shoes, and caps, and portions of its clothing which
were thrown back into the courtyard to be gathered
up by those who could recognise their own property.
By the time I arrived things were settling down.
We had to wait in the second courtyard, and the
women, Chinese ladies with their little aching feet,
and Manchus in their high head-dresses sat them-
selves down on the edge of the causeway, because
standing on pavement is wearisome, and there
waited patiently till the doors were opened, and
inside everything was soon going again as gaily as
at an ordinary garden-party in Somerset.

" Do you like Chinese tea ? " asked a Chinese lady
of me in slow and stilted English. I said I did.

"Come," said she, taking my hand in her cold
little one, and hand in hand we walked, or rather I
walked and she tottered, across to one of the great
pavilions that had been erected, and there she sat
me down and a cup of the excellent tea was brought
me, and every one of the Chinese ladies present,
out of the kindly hospitality of her heart towards the
lonely foreigner, gave me, with her own fair and
shapely little hands, a cake from the dish that was
set before us by a white-clad servant. Frankly, I
wished they wouldn't be so hospitable. I wanted
to say I was quite capable of choosing my own cake,

92 A WOMAN IN CHINA

and that I had a rooted objection to other people
pawing the food I intended to eat, but it seemed it
might be rude, and I did not wish to nip kindly
feelings in the bud. And then, as the evening
shadows drew long, I went back to my hotel, sorry
to leave the Forbidden City, glad to have had this
one little glimpse of the strange and wonderful that
is bound to pass away.

The Empress died in February, in March they
held this, can we call it lying-in-state, but it was not
till the 3rd of April that her funeral cortege moved
from the Forbidden City, and the streets of Peking
were thronged with those who came to pay her
respect. Did they mourn? Well, I don't know.
Hardly, I think, was it mourning in the technical
sense. The man in the street in England is far
enough away from the king on the throne, but in
China it seems as if he might inhabit a different
sphere.

The sky was a cloudless blue, and the bright
golden sunshine poured down hot as a July day in
England, or a March day in Australia, there was
not a wisp of cloud in the sky ; in all the five weeks
that I had been in China there had never been the
faintest indication that such a thing was ever
expected, ever known, but at first the brilliancy had
been cold, now it was warm, the winter was past,
and from the great Tartar wall, looking over the
Tartar City — the city that the Mings conquered and
the Manchus made their own — the forest of trees
that hid the furthest houses was all tinged with the
faintest, daintiest green; and soon to the glory of
blue and gold, the blue of the sky and the gold of
the sunshine, would be added the vivid green that

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 93

tells of the new-born life. And one woman who
had held high place here, one sad woman, who had
missed most that was good in fife, if rumours be
true, was to be carried to her long home that
day.

The funeral procession started from the Eastern
Gate of the Forbidden City, came slowly down the
broad street known now as Morrison Street, turned
into the way that passes the Legations and runs
along by the glacis whereon the conquering Western
nations have declared that, for their safety, no
Chinese shall build a house, the Europeans call it
the Viale d'ltalia, because it passes by the Italian
Legation, and the Chinese by the more eupho-
nious name of Chang an Cheeh — the street of
Eternal Repose — a curious Commentary on the
fighting that went on there in 1900, into the Chien
Men Street, that is the street of the main gate
through which it must go to the railway station.

It seemed to me strange this ruler of an ancient
people, buried with weird and barbaric rites, was to
be taken to her last resting-place by the modern
railway, that only a very few years ago her
people, at the height of their anti-foreign feeling,
had wished to oust from the country — root and
branch. But since the funeral procession was going
to the railway station it must pass through the Chien
Men, and the curtain wall that ran round the great
gate offered an excellent point of vantage from
which I, with the rest of the European population,
might see all there was to be seen. And for this
great occasion, the gate in the south of the curtain
wall, the gate that is always shut because only the
highest in the land may pass through, was open,

94 A WOMAN IN CHINA

for the highest in the land, the last of the Manchu
rulers, was dead.

I looked down into the walled-in space between
the four gateway arches, as into an arena, and the
whole pageant passed below me. First of all
marching with deliberate slowness, that contrives to
be dignified if they are only carrying coals, came
about twenty camels draped in imperial yellow with
tails of sable, also an imperial badge hanging from
their necks. The Manchus were a hunting people,
and though they have been dwellers in towns for
the last two hundred and fifty years the fact was not
forgotten now that their last ruler had died. She
was going on a journey, a long, long journey; she
might want to rest by the way, therefore her camels
bore tent-poles and tents of the imperial colour.
They held their heads high and went noiselessly
along, pad, pad, pad, as their like have gone to and
fro from Peking for thousands of years. Mongol,
or Manchu, or son of Han, it is all the same to the
camel. He ministers to man's needs because he
must, but he himself is unchanging as the ages, fixed
in his way as the sky above, whether he bears grain
from the north, or coal from the Western Hills, or
tents and drapery for an imperial funeral. Then
there were about fifty white ponies, without saddle
or trapping of any kind, each led by a mafoo clad
in blue like an ordinary coolie. The Peking carts
that followed with wheels and tilts of yellow were of
a past age, but, after all, does not the King of Great
Britain and Ireland on State occasions ride in a
most old-world coach. And then I noticed things
came in threes. Three carts, three yellow palan-
keens full of artificial flowers, three sedan chairs

In

THE CHIEN MEN FROM THE CURTAIN WALL.
(See page 93)

LOU NEAR THE AMERICAN LEGATION.
(See page 60)

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 95

also yellow covered, and all around these groups
were attendants clad in shimmering rainbow muslin
and thick felt hats, from the pointed crown of which
projected long yellow feathers. Slowly, slowly, the
procession moved on, broken now and again by
bands of soldiers in full marching order. There
was a troop of cavalry of the Imperial Guard they
told me, but how could it be imperial when their
five-coloured lance pennons fluttering gaily in the
air, clearly denoted the New Republic ? There was
a detachment of mounted police in black and yellow
— the most modern of uniforms — there were more
attendants in gaily coloured robes carrying wooden
halberds, embroidered fans, banners, and umbrellas,
and the yellow palankeens with the artificial flowers
were escorted by Buddhist lamas in yellow robes
crossed with crimson sashes, each with a stick of
smouldering incense in his hand. In those palan-
keens were the dead woman's seals, her power, the
power that she must now give up. I could see the
smoke, and the scent of the incense rose to our
nostrils as we stood on the wall forty feet above.
Between the various groups, between the yellow
lamas who dated from the days of the Buddha long
before the Christ, between the khaki-clad troops and
the yellow and black police, things of yesterday,
came palace attendants tossing into the air white
paper discs. The dead Empress would want money
for her journey, and here it was, distributed with a
lavish hand. It was only white paper, blank and
soiled by the dust of the road, when I picked it up a
little later on, but for her it would serve all purposes.
The approach of the bier itself was heralded by
the striking together of two slabs of wood by a

96 A WOMAN IN CHINA

couple of attendants, and before it came, clad all in
the white of mourning, the palace eunuchs who had
guarded her privacy when in life; a few Court
attendants in black, and then between lines of khaki-
uniformed modern infantry in marching order, the
bier covered with yellow satin, vivid, brilliant,
embroidered with red phoenixes that marked her
high rank — the dragon for the Emperor, the phoenix
for his consort. The two pieces of wood clacked
together harshly and the enormous bier moved on.
It was mounted on immense yellow poles and borne
by eighty men dressed in brilliant robes of varie-
gated muslin, red being the predominating colour.
They wore hats with yellow feathers coming out of
the crown, and they staggered under their burden,
as might the slaves in Nineveh or Babylon have
faltered and groaned beneath their burdens, two
thousand years ago.

Out of the northern archway came the camels and
the horses, the soldiers, the lamas, the eunuchs, out
came all the quaint gay paraphernalia — umbrellas,
and fans, palankeens, and sedan chairs, and banners
— and slowly crossed the great courtyard, the arena ;
a stop, a long pause, then on again, and the southern
gate swallowed them up, again the clack of the strips
of wood, and the mighty bier, borne on the shoulders
of the Babylonish slaves. Slowly, slowly, then it
stood still, and we felt as if it must stay there for
ever, as if the eighty men who upheld it must be
suffering unspeakable things. Once more the clack
of the strips of wood, and the southern archway in
due course swallowed it up, too, with the few halber-
diers and the detachment of soldiery who completed
the procession.

THE FUNERAL OF AN EMPRESS 97

Outside the Chien Men was the railway station,
the crowded people — crowded like Chinese flies in
summer, and that is saying a great deal — were
cleared away by the soldiers, the bier was lifted on
to a car, the bands struck up a weird funeral march,
the soldiers presented arms, the lama priests fell on
their knees, and then very, very slowly the train
steamed out of the station, and the last of the Manchu
Empresses was borne to her long home.

Was it impressive I asked myself as I went down
the ramp? And the answer was a little difficult to
find. Quaint and strange and Eastern, for the
thing that has struck me so markedly in China was
here marked as ever. It was like the paper money
that was thrown with such lavish generosity into the
air. Amongst all the magnificence was the bizarre
note — that discordant touch of tawdriness. Beneath
the gorgeous robes of the attendants, plainly to be
seen, were tatters and uncleanliness, the soldiers in
their ill-fitting uniforms looked makeshift, and the
police wanted dusting. And yet — and again I must
say and yet, for want of better words — behind it all
was some reality, something that gripped like the
haunting sound of the dirge, or the stately march of
the camels that have defied all change.

CHAPTER VI

A TIME OF REJOICING

The charm of Peking— A Chinese theatre— Electric light— The
custodian of the theatre— Bargaining for a seat— The
orchestra — The scenery of Shakespeare — Realistic gesture— A
city wall — A mountain spirit — Gorgeous dresses — Bundles of
towels — Women's gallery — Armed patrols — Rain in April —
The food of the peasant— Famine— The value of a daughter
— God be thanked.

THE Legation Quarter in Peking, as I was reminded
twenty times a day, is not China, it is not even
Peking, but it is a pleasant place in which to stay ;
a place where one may foregather and exchange
ideas with one's kind, and yet whence one may go
forth and see all Peking; more, may see places
where still the foreigner is something to be stared
at, and wondered at, and where the old, unchanging
civilisation still goes on. Ordinarily if you would
see something new, something that gives a fresh
sensation, it is necessary to go out from among your
kind and brave discomfort, or spend a small fortune
to guard against that discomfort, but here, in Peking,
you who are interested in such things may see an
absolutely new world, and yet have all the comforts,
except reading matter, to which you have been
accustomed in London. It was no wonder I
lingered in Peking. Always there was something

GILDED SHOP-FRONT, PEKING.

CORNER IN PEKING PAWNSHOP.

A TIME OF REJOICING 99

new to see, always there was something fresh to
learn, and at any moment, within five minutes, I
could step out into another world, the world of Marco
Polo, the world the Jesuit Fathers saw when first
the Western nations were beginning to realise there
were any countries besides their own.

There are people — I have heard them — who
complain that Peking is dull. Do not believe them.
But, after all, perhaps I am not the best judge. As
a young girl, trammelled by trying to do the correct
thing and behave as a properly brought up young
lady ought, I have sometimes, say at an afternoon
call when I hope I was behaving prettily, found
life dull, but since I have gone my own way I have
been sad sometimes, lonely often, but dull never,
and for that God be thanked. But Peking, I think,
would be a very difficult place in which to be really
dull.

It is even possible to go to the theatre every night,
but it is a Chinese theatre and that will go a long
way. Nevertheless, I felt it was .a thing I should
like to see ; so one evening two of my friends took
me to the best theatre that was open. The best was
closed for political reasons they said, because the
new Government, not as sure of itself as it would like
to be, did not wish the people to assemble together.
This was a minor theatre, a woman's theatre; that
is one where only women were the actors, quite a
new departure in the Celestial world, for until about
a year before the day of which I write, no woman
was ever seen upon the stage, and her parts, as they
were in the old days in Europe, were taken by men
and boys. Even now, men and women never appear
on the stage together, never, never do the sexes

100 A WOMAN IN CHINA

mingle in China, and the women who act take the
very lowest place in the social scale.

One cold night in March three rickshaws put
us down at an open doorway in the Chinese City
outside the Tartar wall. The Chinese the greatest
connoisseurs of pictures do not as yet think much of
posters, though the British and American Tobacco
Company is doing its best to educate them up to
that level, so outside this theatre the door was not
decorated with photographs of the lovely damsels to
be seen within, clad in as few clothes as the censor
will allow, but the intellects of the patrons were
appealed to, and all around the doors were bright
red sheets of paper, on which the delights offered
for the evening were inscribed in characters of
gold.

We went along a narrow passage with a floor of
hard, beaten earth, and dirty whitewashed walls on
either side, along such a passage I could imagine
went those who first listened to the sayings of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The light was dim,
the thrifty Chinaman was not going to waste the
precious and expensive light of compressed gas
where it was not really needed, and from behind the
wall came the weird strains of Chinese music. There
appeared to be only one door, and here sat a fat and
smiling Chinese, who explained to my friends that
by the rules of the theatre, the men and women
were divided, and that I must go to the women's
gallery. They demurred. It would be very dull
for me, who could not understand a word of the
language, to sit alone. Could no exception be made
in my favour? The doorkeeper was courteous as
only a Chinese can be, and said that for his part,

A TIME OF REJOICING 101

he had no objection ; but the custodian of the theatre,
put there by the Government to ensure law and
order, would object.

I wanted badly to stay with these men who could
explain to me all that was going on, so we sent for
the custodian, another smiling gentleman, not quite
so fat, in the black and yellow uniform of the military
police. He listened to all we had to say, sym-
pathised, but declared that the regulations must be
carried out. My friends put it to him that the
regulations were archaic, and that it was high time
they were altered. He smilingly agreed. They
were archaic, very ; but then you see, they were the
regulations. He was here to see that they were
carried out, and he suggested, as an alternative, that
we should take one of the boxes at the side. The
question of sitting in front was dismissed, and we
gave ourselves to the consideration of a box for
which six dollars, that is twelve shillings English
currency, or three dollars American, were demanded.
We demurred, it seems you always question prices in
China. We told the doorkeeper that the price was
very high, and that as we were sitting where we did
not wish to sit, he ought to come down. He did.
Shades of Keith and Prowse ! Two dollars !

We went up some steep and narrow steps of the
most primitive order, were admitted to a large hall
lighted by compressed gas — in Cambulac! here in
the heart of an ancient civilisation — surrounded by
galleries with fronts of a dainty lattice-work of
polished wood, such as the Chinese employ for
windows, and we took our places in a box, humbly
furnished with bare benches and a wooden table.
Just beneath us was the stage, and the play was in

102 A WOMAN IN CHINA

full swing — actors, property men, and orchestra all
on at once. It was large and square, raised a little
above the people in the body of the hall and sur-
rounded by a little low screen of the same dainty
lattice-work. At the back was the orchestra, com-
posed only of men in ordinary coolie dress — dark
blue cotton — with long queues. There were casta-
nets, and a drum, cymbals, native fiddle, and various
brazen instruments that looked like brass trays, and
they all played untiringly, with an energy worthy of
a better cause, and with the apparent intention — it
couldn't have been so really — of drowning the actors.
Yet taken altogether the result was strangely quaint
and Eastern.

The entertainment consisted of a number of little
plays lasting from half an hour to about an hour.
There were never more than half a dozen people
on the stage at once, very often only two in the play
altogether, and what it was all about we could only
guess after all, for even my friends, who could speak
ordinary Chinese fluently, could not understand
much that was said. Possibly this was because
every actor, instead of using the ordinary conversa-
tional tone, adapted as we adapt it to the stage,
used a high, piercing falsetto that was extremely un-
natural, and reminded me of nothing on this earth
that I know of except perhaps a pig-killing. Still
even I gathered something of the story of the play
as it progressed, for the gestures of these women,
unlike their voices, were extremely dramatic, and
some of the situations were not to be mistaken.
Scenery was as it was in Shakespeare's day. It was
understood. But for all the bare crudity, the dresses
of the actors which belonged to a previous age,

A TIME OF REJOICING 103

whether they were supposed to represent men or
women, were most rich and beautiful. The general,
with his hideously painted face and his long black
beard of thread, wore a golden embroidered robe
that must have been worth a small fortune ; a soldier,
apparently a sort of Dugald Dalgety, who pits him-
self against a scholar clad in modest dark colours,
appeared in a blue satin of the most delicate shade,
beautifully embroidered with gorgeous lotus flowers
and palms ; and the principal ladies, who were really
rather pretty in spite of their highly painted faces
and weird head-dresses, wore robes of delicate love-
liness that one of my companions, whose business it
was to know about such matters, told me must have
been, like the general's, of great value. The comic
servant or country man wore a short jumper and a
piece of white paper and powder about his nose.
It certainly did make him look funny. The dignified
scholar was arrayed all in black, the soldier wore the
gayest of embroidered silks and satins, the land-
lady of the inn or boarding-house, a pleasant, smiling
woman with roses in her hair and tiny maimed feet,
had a pattern of black lace-work painted on her fore-
head, and when the male characters had to be very
fierce indeed, they wore long and flowing beards,
beards to which no Chinaman, I fear me, can ever
hope to attain, for the Chinaman is not a hairy man.
When a gallant gentleman with tight sleeves which
proclaimed him a warrior, and a long beard of bright
red thread which made him a very fierce warrior
indeed, snapped his fingers and lifted up his legs,
lifted them up vehemently, you knew that he was
getting over a wall or mounting his horse. You
could take your choice. A mountain, the shady

104 A WOMAN IN CHINA

side of it, was represented by one panel of a screen
which leaned drunkenly against a very ordinary
chair, giving shelter to a very evil spirit with a dress
that represented a leopard, and a face of the grim-
mest and most terrifying of those animals.

This was a play that required much property to
be displayed, for a general with a face painted all
black and white and a long black beard, with his
army of five, took refuge behind a stout city wall
that was made of thin blue cotton stuff supported on
four bamboo poles, and this convenient wall marched
on to the stage in the hands of a couple of stout
coolies. A wicked mountain spirit outside the walls
did terrible things. Ever and again flashes of fire
burst out after his speech, and I presume you were
not supposed to see the coolie who manipulated that
fire, though he stood on the stage as large as any
actors in the piece.

It is hard, too, talking in that high falsetto against
the shrieking, strident notes of the music, so naturally
the actors constantly required a little liquid refresh-
ment, and an attendant was prompt in offering tea
in tiny round basins; and nobody saw anything
incongruous in his standing there with the teapot
handy, and in slack moments taking a sip him-
self.

The fun apparently consisted in repartee, and
every now and then, the audience, who were silent
and engrossed, instead of applauding spontan-
eously, ejaculated, as if at a word of command,
" Hao ! " which means " Good ! "

That audience was the best-behaved and most
attentive I have ever seen. It consisted mostly of
men, as far as I could seeL of the middle class.

A TIME OF REJOICING 105

They were packed close together, with here and
there a little table or bench among them ; and up
and down went vendors of apples, oranges, pieces
of sugar-cane, cakes and sweetmeats.

There were also people who supplied hot, damp
towels. A man stood here and there in the audience,
and from the outer edge of the theatre, came hurtling
to him, over the heads of the people, a bundle of these
towels. For a cent or so apiece he distributed them,
the members of the audience taking a refreshing
wipe of face and head and hands and handing the
towels back. When the purveyor of the towels had
used up all his stock, and got them all back again,
he tied them up into a neat bundle, and threw them
back the way they had come, receiving a fresh stock
in return. Never did a bundle of towels fail in
reaching its appointed place, and scores of cents
must the providers have pocketed. For the delight
of ventilation is not appreciated in China, and to say
that theatre was stuffy is a mild way of putting it.
The warm wet towel must have given a sort of
refreshment. They offered us some up in the digni-
fied seclusion of our box, but we felt we could sustain
life without washing our faces with doubtful towels
during the progress of the entertainment. Tea was
brought, too, excellent Chinese tea, and I drank it
with pleasure. I drink Chinese tea without either
milk or sugar as a matter of course now; but that
night at the Chinese theatre I was only trying it and
wondering could I drink it at all.

Opposite us was the women's gallery, full of
Chinese and Manchu ladies, with high head-
dresses and highly painted faces. The Chinese
ladies often paint their faces, but their attempts at

106 A WOMAN IN CHINA

decoration pale before that of the Manchus, who put
on the colour with such right goodwill that every
woman when she is dressed in her smartest, looks
remarkably like a sign-board. The wonder is that
anyone could possibly be found who could admire
the unnatural effect. Someone, I suppose, there is,
or it would not be done, but no men went near the
women's gallery that evening. It would have been
the grossest breach of decorum for a man to do any
such thing, and the painted ladies drank their tea
by themselves.

Somewhere about midnight, earlier than usual,
consequent, I imagine, upon the disturbed state of
the country, the entertainment ended with a perfect
crash of music, and the most orderly audience in
the world went out into the streets of the Chinese
City, into the clear night. Only in very recent
years, they tell me, have the streets of Peking been
lighted. Formerly the people went to bed at dusk,
but they seem to have taken very kindly to the
change, for the streets were thronged. There were
people on foot, people in rickshaws, people in the
springless Peking carts, and important personages
with outriders and footmen in the glass broughams
beloved by the Chinese ; and there were the military
police everywhere, now at night with rifles across
their shoulders. Here, disciplining this most
orderly crowd, they struck me as being strangely
incongruous. I wondered at those police then, and
I wonder still. What are they for? Whatever the
reason, there they were at every few yards. Never
have I had such a strange home-coming from a
theatre. Down on us forty feet high frowned the
walls built in past ages, we crossed the Beggars'

A TIME OF REJOICING 107

Bridge of glorious marble, we went under the mighty
archway of the Chien Men, and we entered the
Legation Quarter guarded like a fortress, and I
went to bed meditating on the difference between a
Chinese play and a modern musical comedy. They
have, I fancy, one thing in common. They are
interesting enough to see for the first time, but a little
of them goes a long way.

I went to bed under a clear and cloudless sky,
and the next morning, to my astonishment, it was
raining. I have, of course, seen rain many, many
times, and many, many times have I seen heavier
rain than fell all this April day in Peking, but never
before, not even in my own country where ram is the
great desideratum, have I seen rain better worth
recording.

It was indeed this April day rain at last!

" To everything there is a season," says the
preacher, and the spring is the time for a little rain
in Northern China. In England people suppose it
rains three hundred and sixty days out of the three
hundred and sixty-five, except in Leap Year when
we manage to get in another rainy day, but as a
matter of fact, I believe the average is about one
hundred and fifty wet days in the year, with a certain
number more in which clouds in the sky blot out
the sunshine. In the north of China, on the other
hand, there had been, to all intents and purposes, no
cloud in the sky since the summer rains of 1912, till
this rain in April which I looked out upon. Is not
rain like that worth recording? Still more do I feel
it is worth recording when I think of what that day's
rain, that seemed so little to me, meant to millions
of people. All through the bitter cold winter the

108 A WOMAN IN CHINA

country lay in the grip of the frost, but the sun
reigned in a heaven of peerless blue, and the light
was brilliant with a brilliancy that makes the sun-
shine of a June day in England a poor, pale thing.
The people counted for their crops on the rain that
would come in due season, the rain in the spring.
March came with the thaw, and the winds from the
north lifted the loose soil into the air in clouds
of dust. But March passed alternating brilliant
sunshine and clouds of dust, and there was never a
cloud in the sky, never a drop of moisture for the
gasping earth. April came — would it go on like
this till June? Rain that comes in due season is
necessary to the crops that are the wealth, nay the
very life of Northern China.

From the beams of the peasant's cottage hang the
cobs of corn, each one counted ; in jars or boxes is
his little store of grain, millet — just bird-seed in
point of fact — he has a few dried persimmons per-
haps and — nothing else. Twice a day the house-
wife measures out the grain for the meal — she knows,
the tiniest child in the household knows exactly how
long it will last with full measure, how it may be
spun out over a few more dreary, hunger-aching
days, how then, if the rain has not come, if the
crops have failed, famine will stalk in the land,
famine, cruel, pitiless, and from his grip there is no
escaping.

Think of it, as I did that April day in Peking,
when I watched the rain pelting down. Think of
the dumb, helpless peasant watching the cloudless
blue sky and the steadily diminishing store of grain,
watching, hoping, for the faintest wisp of white
cloud that shall give promise of a little moisture.

GATHERING IN KAOLIANG FOR THRESHING.

A THRESHING FLOOR.

A TIME OF REJOICING 109

They tell me, those who know, that the Chinaman
is a fatalist, that he never looks so far ahead, but do
they not judge him with Western eyes? True he
seldom complains, but he tills his fields so carefully
that he must see in imagination the crops they are
to produce, he must know, how can he help knowing,
that if there be no harvest, there is an end to his
home, his family, his children ; that if perchance his
life be spared, it will be grey and empty, broken,
desolate, scarce worth living. Every scanty posses-
sion will have to be sold to buy food in a ruinously
high market, even the loved children, and no one
who has seen them together can doubt that the
Chinese deeply love their children, must go, though
for the little daughter whose destination will be a
brothel of one of the great cities, but two dollars,
four pitiful shillings, may be hoped for, and when
that is eaten up, the son sold into slavery will bring
very little more. To sell their children sounds
terrible, but what can they do? Some must be
sacrificed that the others may have a chance of life,
and even if they are not sacrificed, their fate is to
die slowly under the bright sky, in the relentless
sunshine. This is the spectre that haunts the
peasant. This is the thing that has befallen his
fathers, that has befallen him, that may befall
him again any year, that no care on his part
can guard him from, that the clear sky for ever
threatens.

" From plague, pestilence and famine, Good Lord
deliver us."

Does ever that Litany to the Most High go up
in English cathedral with such prayerful fervour,
such thorough realisation of what is meant by the

110 A WOMAN IN CHINA

supplication, as is in the heart of the peasant mother
in China, carefully measuring out the grain for the
meal. Only she would put it the other way. " From
famine, and the plague and pestilence that stalk in
the wake of the famine, oh pitiful, merciful God
deliver us ! "

And when I took all this in, when I heard men
who had seen the suffering describe it, was it any
wonder that I rejoiced at the dull grey sky, at the
sound of the rain on the roof, at the water rushing
down the gutters.

On the gently sloping hill-sides of Manchuria,
where they grow the famous bean, the hill-sides that
I had seen in their winter array, on the wide plains
of Mongolia, where only the far horizon bounds the
view, and you march on to a yet farther horizon
where the Mongol tends his flocks and herds, and the
industrious Chinaman, pushing out beyond the pro-
tecting wall, has planted beans and sown oats, in
Honan, where the cotton and the maize and the kao-
liang grow, all along the gardens and grain-fields of
Northern China, had come the revivifying rain.
The day before, under the blue sky, lay the bare
brown earth, acres and acres, miles and miles of it,
carefully tilled, nowhere in the world have I seen
such carefully tilled land, full of promise, but of
promise only, of a rich harvest. Then, not hoped
for so late, a boon hardly to be prayed for, welcome
as sunshine never was welcomez came the rain, six
hours steady rain, and the spectre of famine, ever
so close to the Chinese peasant, for a time drifted
into the background with old, unhappy, long-
forgotten things. Next morning on all the khaki-
coloured country outside Peking was a tinge of

A TIME OF REJOICING 111

green, and we knew that a bountiful harvest was
ensured, knew that soon the country would be a
beautiful emerald. The house-mother, the patient,
uncomplaining, ignorant, Chinese house-mother,
might fill her pot joyfully, the house-father might
look at his little daughter, with the red thread twisted
in her hair, and know, that for a year at least, she
was safe in his sheltering arms, for the blessed rain
had come, God given.

Peking in the rain is an uncomfortable place. It
is built for the sunshine. The streets of the city
were knee-deep in mud, the hu t'ungs were impas-
sable for a man on foot unless he would be mud up
to the knees, for there had been six hours solid down-
pour, and every moment it continued was worth
pounds to the country. What was a twenty-five
million loan with its heavy interest, against such a
rain as this? More than one hundred thousand
people were affected by the downpour, were glad
and rejoicing that day at the good-fortune that had
befallen them. This mass of human beings, at the
very lowest computation had considerably more than
twenty-five million pounds rained down upon it in
the course of six hours. There came with that rain,
that blurred the windows of my room, prosperity for
the land, and, for a time at least, peace, for peace
and good harvests in China are sometimes inter-
changeable terms. What did it matter to Northern
China at that moment that the nations were bicker-
ing over the loan, that America was promising,
Britain hesitating, Russia threatening ? What did it
matter whether Emperor, President, or Dictator, was
in power? What did it matter that the national
representatives hesitated to come to the capital?

112 A WOMAN IN CHINA

What did it matter what mistakes they made ? What
does the peasant tilling his field, the woman filling
her cooking-pot know about these things? What
do they care ? A mightier factor than these, a greater
power than man's had stepped in. God be thanked,
in China that day it rained.

CHAPTER VII

ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD

Courteous Americans— Nankou Pass— Beacon towers— Inaccessible
hills — " Balbus has built a wall " — Tiny towns — " Watch-
man, what of the night? " — Deserted watch-towers — -
Thoughtful Chinese waiter— Ming Tombs— Chinese carrying
Chair — Stony way — Greatest p'ia lou in China — Amphitheatre
among the barren hills — Tomb of Yung Lo — Trunks of
sandal-wood trees — Enterprising Chinese guard.

WHEREVER I might wander in China, and with the
rumours of war that were in the air, it looked as
if my wanderings were going to be somewhat
restricted, to one place I was bound to wander,
and that was the Great Wall of China. Even in the
days of my grandmother's curios, I had heard about
that, one of the wonders of the world, and I could
never have left China without seeing it.

" You can do it in a couple of days," said the young
man, who had chastened me gently when first I
entered Peking. " I'm going up on Tuesday.
You'd better come along. The poet's coming too,"
he added.

The poet, a real live poet, who thought a deal
more about his binding than his public, was like me
I think, he did not like seeing places in crowds, and
at first he did not give us much of his society.
There was also a millionaire, an American million-
aire, his little wife, his big daughter, and his angular

113 H

114 A WOMAN IN CHINA

maiden sister. They had an observation-car fixed
on to the train, and the guard came along and said
that if we ordinary travellers, who were not million-
aires, cared to come in the car, the millionaire would
be very pleased.

I have travelled so much by myself that the
chance of congenial company once in a way was
delightful, but I did feel we ought not to have taken
the train to the Nankou Pass. A mule litter, or a
Peking cart would have been so much more suitable.
However, it is as well to be as comfortable as
possible.

From the north came China's foes, the sturdy
horsemen from Mongolia, the mountain men from
the Manchurian Hills, and because the peaceful,
industrious inhabitants of the rich, alluvial plains
feared greatly the raiders, they, just at the Nankou
Pass, where these inaccessible hills might be passed,
built watch-towers and kept ward. There they
stand, even to this day, upon jutting peaks where
the pass opens into the plain, grey stone watch-
towers with look-outs and slits for the archers, and
beacon-towers which could flash the fiery warning
that should rouse the country to the south. For
thirteen miles we went up the pass, the cleft that the
stream, babbling cheerfully now in April over its
water- worn rocks, has carved for itself through the
stony hills, and its weird beauty never palls.

Always there were the hills, broken to pieces,
tossed together by the hand of a giant, there were
great clefts in them, vistas looking up stony and
inaccessible valleys, gullies that are black as if a
burning fiery furnace had been set in their midst,
little pockets where the stream widened and there

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.

(See Page 1 16)

TEMPLE IN TOMB OF YUNG LO.

(Seepage 124)

ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 115

was a patch of green pasture, some goats grazing, a
small, neat farm-house and fruit-trees, pink and
white, almond, peach, or pear, a wealth of blossom.
On every patch of those barren hill-sides where a
tree might grow, a tree — a fruit-tree — because the
Chinaman is strictly utilitarian, had been planted;
only here and there, over the sacred graves of China,
there was a patch of willow, tender with the delicate
dainty green of early spring.

Always in China there are people ; and here there
were tiny towns packed together on ledges of the
eternal hills, with the fruit-trees and the willows
that shade the graves, and there were walls — walls
that stretch up to the inaccessible portion of the
hills, where only a goat might climb, and no invad-
ing army could possibly pass. So numerous were
these walls that my cheery young friend suggested
that if ever a village head-man had a little spare
time on his hands he remarked: "Oh, I say, here's
a fine day and plenty of stones, let's go out and build
a wall." And then next day the villagers in the
next hamlet looking out said, " By Jove, Balbus, no
Wong, has built a wall. We can't be beat." But I
don't think in the old days the villagers on those
hills ever took life quite as lightly as that.

Over and over again it is repeated, the watch-
towers on the hills and the strips of wall running
down into the valley, walls with wide tops on which
companies of archers might stand, protected by a
breast-work slit for arrows, with a wall behind again
to which they might retire if they were beaten,
making the space between hard to hold, even for a
victorious enemy. Always there were the walls and
watch-towers as we went on up the valley, telling

116 A WOMAN IN CHINA

in their own way, the story of the strenuous lives of
the men who lived here in the old days.

Down the mule track these walls command came
an endless company of people, wandering along,
slowly, persistently, as they have wandered since
the dawn of history. They had mules, and donkeys,
and horses — muzzled so that they cannot eat the
tufts of herbage by the roadside — laden with grain,
and hides, and all manner of merchandise. There
were blue-coated coolies trudging along with
bamboos across their shoulders, their heavy loads
dangling from either end ; and there were laden
camels, the ragged dromedaries from Mongolia, long
lines of them, picking their way among the stones
along the road by the side of the stream. The
camels, and the walls, and the watch-towers go
together, they enhance the wonder and the charm of
this road to the Great Wall.

Up and up we went, up the valley, past the great
archway where is the Customs barrier even to-day,
and on, higher and higher, deeper into the hills,
till ahead, crowning them, climbing their steepest
points, bridging their most inaccessible declivities,
clear-cut against the blue sky, I saw what I had come
out to see, one of the wonders of the world, the Great
Wall of China! Here among the stony, arid hills,
that anywhere else in the world would be left to the
rock-doves and the rabbits, we came upon a piece
of man's handiwork that for ages has cried aloud to
those who have eyes to see, or ears to hear, of the
colossal industry of China, nay of more than that,
of the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the
community. On and on went the Wall, up and up
and up, cliinbing steadily, falling, climbing again,

ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 117

and again dropping into the valleys. There were
watch-towers and a broad highway along its top;
here stood the sentries, who kept ceaseless watch
and ward looking ever for the invader, whether he
came in countless array, a conquering army, or in
small raiding bands that might take toll of the rich
crops to the south, steal a few women, or hold a
wealthy squire up to ransom.

"Watchman, what of the night? What of the
night? Is the road clear to the north? Hist!
Hist! What is that beneath the loom of the hills?
What is the sound that comes up on the wind ? "

" There are always dark shadows in the loom of
the hills, and it is only a stone falling down the

gully."

"Ah, but the dark shadows have hidden a band
of Manchurian archers, and the stone might be
loosened by the hoof of a Mongol pony. Watch-
man! Watchman, what of the night? What of the
night?"

That was the way I felt about it as, having got
out of the train, and taken a chair, we made our way
through the desolate country to the Nankou Pass,
and I, forgetting all else, stood gazing my fill at the
Wall I had heard about ever since I was a little child.
Dreaming of what it must have been in the past, I
forgot, for the moment, the present, and the passing
of time. I was alone, as the poet wished to be,
and then a high-pitched voice brought me to this
present day again.

" Say Momma," said the millionaire — we thought
he was a millionaire because of the observation-car,
but he may have been just more ordinarily well-
to-do than a writer of books — "where's Cora?"

118 A WOMAN IN CHINA

" Search me," said Momma placidly.

He didn't search her, perhaps because, seeing
she was but five feet and small and thin at that, he
did not think it likely that Cora, who was a buxom
young person close on six feet, could possibly be
concealed anywhere about her person.

The maiden aunt pointed an accusing finger up
the rough, grass-grown stones that make the top of
the Wall.

" Skipping like a young ram," she snorted, and
then all three raised their voices, and those old-
world rocks rang with shouts of "Cora! Cora! !
Cora! ! !"

I trembled for the poet's feelings, if he were
anywhere within range, but after all, in their own
way and time, I dare say the keepers of the Wall
were just as commonplace. My companion, who
was steadily making his way up the Wall beside
Cora, turned at the ear-piercing yells, looked at
his watch, spoke to the girl, and came slowly back
while she quickened her pace for a moment, as if
determined to get over the other side of the hill,
whatever happened.

" The young gentleman has the most sense,"
opined Momma.

" She'll come now he's turned," said the maiden
aunt acidly, and even though she did come, down
across the rough stones, by the ruined watch-towers,
I felt the insinuation was unjust.

Those watch-towers are empty now, deserted and
desolate. No thoughtful captain, weighed down
with responsibility, looks through their arched
windows, no javelin men stand on the stone steps,
no sentry tramps along peering out to the north.

THE NANKOU PASS.

GATEWAY IN THE WALL, NANKOU PASS.

ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 119

The Wall is tumbling into disrepair, the grass and
weeds grow up between the stones, and the wonder
of the world is a mighty ruin, stately even in its
decay, for never again beneath the sun will such
another wall be built. Look at it climbing up those
hills, cutting the blue sky, bridging the gullies, and
think of the tears, and sweat, and blood, that went
to the building of it ! That foundations may be well
and truly laid, so says tradition, they must be laid on
a living human being. It is one way of saying that
on sacrifice our lives are based, that for every good
thing in life something of value must be given ; so
to the building of the Wall, that was to hold China
safe, went hundreds and thousands of lives, and its
upkeep and its watching cost more than we can well
imagine.

We went back to the Ching Er Hotel at Nankou,
the little hotel close to the railway and plunged once
more into modern life for, unpretentious and kept
by Chinese as it is, it still represented the present
day. It is just one big room, divided into a hall
and many little rooms by so many sheets of paper,
so that the man in the room in front may whisper
and nothing be lost upon the man in the room at
the back, six rooms away, while to have a bath is
a matter of public interest, for the smallest splash
can be heard from one end of the building to the
other.

Nevertheless, I shall always have friendly feelings
towards that little hotel, where they lodged me so
hardly, and fed me so well.

They considered one in every way, too. The
poet had evidently not been troubled by the family
affection of the millionaires, he walked back from the

120 A WOMAN IN CHINA

Wall, and was so full of enthusiasm he forgave my
presence, came to me as I sat at dinner and,
covered with the dust of the way as he was, stood,
and just as I should expect of a poet, waxed eloquent
on the glories he had seen. The Chinese waiter,
with shaven head and long blue smock, let him go
on for a few minutes, then he took him gently and
respectfully by the sleeve.

" Vash," he said solemnly, without the ghost of a
smile on his face ; " vash," and the poet came to
earth with a laugh. We both laughed.

" Well, yes," he said looking at his dust-begrimed
person. " I suppose I had better wash. Ill be
back in a moment. May I sit at your table ? "

And next day I went to see the Ming Tombs.

St Paul's and Westminster are set in the heart of
a mighty city, ever by the peaceful dead sounds the
clamour of the living, yet the living forget, in spite
of the daily reminder they forget. In China, where
graves dot every field, and are part and parcel of
the lives of the people, they bury the honoured dead
far apart from the rush and roar of everyday life,
and they never forget. The Nankou Pass is two
hours from Peking, and the tombs of the Ming
Emperors are nine miles from the Nankou Pass,
set in the very heart of the hills. The entrance to
the pass is barren and lonely enough, but the extra
nine miles is like journeying into the wilderness
where the scapegoat, burdened with the sins of the
community, was driven by the Israelites. It is a
long, long nine miles over a stony mule track where
only a donkey, a pony, or a chair can go, and yet
here centuries ago, when it was ten times farther
away, China buried her dead, the men who sat on

ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 121

the Dragon Throne, and bridged for the nation the
gap that lies between mortal men and high Heaven.
It is lonely now when the roadway of the West
brings Nankou close to the capital, it must have
been unspeakably lonely in the days before the
opening of the railway. A chair seemed to me the
only way to get there, a chair borne by four blue-
clad coolies with queues wrapped round their shaven
heads, and while my companion rode a pony, in a
chair I swung over the stony narrow track away
towards the hills. The hills were rugged and
barren, the same hills that the Wall crossed; on
their stony sides no green thing could ever grow,
and they were brown, and pink, and grey, and when
a white cloud gathered here and there in the far-
away blue sky, the shadows lay across them in great
purple patches. And the road was stony, barely
to be seen, impossible for wheeled traffic, even the
primitive wheeled traffic of Northern China. I
doubt even if a wheelbarrow could have gone along
it. I doubted often whether the heaps of stones on
the slope could possibly be a road, but the coolies
seemed to know, and went steadily on, changing the
pole from one shoulder to the other so often that it
gave me a feeling of brutality that I should use
such a means of locomotion. The only person who
was comfortable was I.

My companion rode beside me sometimes. He
felt himself responsible for my well-being, and it
was good to be looked after.

"Are you all right?"

All right! If the country round was desolate,
the sunshine was glorious, the air, the clear, dry air
of Northern China was as invigorating as cham-

122 A WOMAN IN CHINA

pagne, and I knew that I could go on for ever and
feel myself much blessed. The Ming Tombs were
but an excuse ; it was well and more than well to be
here in the open spaces of the earth, to draw deep
breaths, to feel that neither past nor future mattered ;
here beneath the open sky in the golden sunshine
swinging along, somewhere, anywhere, I had all I
could ask of life.

And always it was a stony way. Sometimes the
coolies climbed up a bank of loose stones that
slipped and rolled away as they passed, sure-footed
as goats, sometimes the stones were piled on either
side and a sort of track meandered in between,
sometimes they were scattered all over the plain in
such masses that even the industrious Chinese
seemed to have given up the task of clearing them
away as hopeless, and had simply tilled the land in
between. For this was no uninhabited desert, deso-
late as it seemed. Always we came across little
stone-built hamlets, there were men and women
working in the fields, and rosy-cheeked children
stood by the wayside and waved their little hands
to the passing stranger. There would be the sound
of bells, and a string of mules or donkeys came
picking tjieir way as soberly as the coolies them-
selves, and left much to themselves by their ragged
drivers. They looked of the poorest, these people,
men and women clad much alike in dirty blue that,
torn here and there, let out the cotton-wool which
padded it for winter warmth.

Probably they knew nothing, nothing of the world
beyond their little dusty, stony hamlets, they prayed
perhaps for the rain that should moisten their dusty,
stony fields, and give them the mess of meal, the

P IA LOU AT ENTRANCE TO HOLY WAY.

HOLY WAY — MING TOMBS.

ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 123

handful of persimmons that is all they ask of Fate, and
they watched the few strangers who came to visit the
tombs, and perhaps never even wondered what the
outside world might be like, if it gave to those who
lived there anything more than fell to the lot of the
humble dwellers on the road to the Ming Tombs.

And at last in the pleasant noontide we came to
the p'ia lou at the entrance, the greatest p'ia lou in
China, that land of p'ia lous, and standing there I
realised, not only the beauty of the archway, but the
wonder of the place the Mings had chosen to be
theirs for all time. It is a great amphitheatre among
these barren hills. St Paul's or Westminster could
not hold these tombs, for Hyde Park might be put
in this valley and yet not half fill it ; and round it,
set against the base of the hills, in great courts
enclosed in pinkish-red walls, the counterpart of
those round the Forbidden City, and planted with
cypress and pine, are the various tombs. A magni-
ficent resting-place, truly! And the dignity is
enhanced by the desolate approach. Through the
p'ia lou is the famous Holy Way, the avenue of
marble animals, of which all the world has so often
heard. What mystic significance had the marble
elephant and the camel, the kneeling horse and the
sedate scholar? Possibly they had no more than
the general suggestion that all things did honour to
the mighty dead laid away in their tombs. A paved
way runs between them, paved with great blocks of
marble brought from the hills, placed there in
bygone ages by the hands of slaves, sweating and
struggling under their loads, or possibly by men
just exactly like the men who were bearing me, men
slaves in all but name, who each day must earn a

124 A WOMAN IN CHINA

few pence or go under in the pitiful struggle for life.
The paved way that runs on for three miles is worn
and broken, the grass comes up between the blocks,
the bridges are falling into disrepair, but these
things are trifles in the face of the amphitheatre set
among the eternal hills, the blue sky and the sun-
shine, these are a memorial here, a memorial that
makes the work of men's hands but a small thing.

Nevertheless that work is very wonderful. No
one, I suppose, except he were making Chinese art
or antiquities a special study, would visit every tomb
in turn. It would take a week, and we, like the
majority of visitors, contented ourselves with that
of Yung Lo, the principal one. And here is a
curious thing worth noting, a thing that possibly
would happen nowhere else in the world, showing
how irrevocably China feels herself bound to the
past. The Ming Emperor was a Chinese, and the
Republic that has just overthrown the Manchu
Dynasty, is also Chinese, so as a mark of respect,
they have repaired, after a fashion, this, the tomb
of the greatest of the Ming Emperors. That is to
say — oh China! they have whitewashed the marble,
painted the golden-brown tiled roof of the temple,
and swept and garnished the great audience hall.

A tomb in China reminds me in no way of death.
We entered through a door studded with heavy
brazen knobs a grass-grown courtyard, where were
trees, pine and cypress. We went along a paved
way, and before us was a building with a curved
roof, with the tiles broken here and there ; it was set
on a platform reached by flights of marble steps, or
rather the flights of steps were on either side, while
in the centre was a ramp on which was beautifully

ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 125

carved in relief the dragon, the sign of Empire,
and the horse, which I have heard some people
say is the sign of good-fortune. On the platform,
through all the cracks in the marble, violets were
forcing their way, making a purple carpet under the
golden sunshine. We crossed to a hall, which is
surely most wonderful. The light was subdued a
little, and the hall that contains in its centre the
memorial tablet of red and gold is as magnificent
in its proportions as York Minster. The roof is
supported by trunks of sandal-wood trees, smooth,
straight, and brown, they run sixty feet up to the
roof, and after more than five hundred years the air
is heavy with the sensuous scent of them. Where
did they get that sandal-wood, those trunks all of
such noble proportions? They must have cost an
immense sum of money, for they never grew in
Northern China.

Another courtyard is behind this hall of audience,
where is a marble fountain, whitewashed, and a
spring that is supposed to cure all ills of the eyes,
and a door apparently leading into a hill-side, behind
which is a grove of cypress trees. The door being
opened, we entered a paved tunnel which led
upwards to a chamber in the heart of the hill,
whence two more ramps led still upwards, one to
the right and the other to the left, into the open air
again. Here the coffin was placed in the mound
through the top of the ramp. The stones with
which the ramps were paved were worn and slippery,
the angle was steep, the leaves from the trees out-
side had drifted in, and the effect was strange and
weird. Nowhere else but in China could such a
thing be. And right on top of the mound, over the

126 A WOMAN IN CHINA

actual grave, is another memorial tablet to the dead
Emperor, looking away out over the valley to the
stony hills, that are the wall which hedges off this
sacred place from the outside world.

And Yung Lo, the Emperor, died in the first
half of the fifteenth century. How many people in
England know or care, where Henry V. lies buried?

The evening was falling when we went back by
the stony mule path, by the little stony villages,
where the mothers were calling their children in
from the fields, and the men were gathering at the
meeting-places for the evening gossip. Of what
did they talk? Of the Emperor dead in his tomb
hundreds of years ago ? Of the New Republic away
in the capital? The Emperor seemed somehow
nearer to the village people. There was the sound
of quaint, tuneless, Eastern music, and sitting with
the sun on his sightless face, surrounded by a
listening little crowd, was a blind musician holding
across his knees a sort of lute. The people turned
and watched as the strangers and the aliens passed,
and the musician thrummed on. Light or dark was
the same to him. The clouds piled now in the
western sky, and the stony land looked unutterably
dreary in the gathering gloom, the coolies must
have been weary, but they went steadily on, chang-
ing the chair pole from one shoulder to the other.
Tne slopes that had been hard to scramble up were
harder to scramble down, but they made no com-
plaint. This was their work, and the night was
coming when they might rest. The night was
coming fast, but we were nearing the end of our
journey. The hills looked cold, and gloomy, and
threatening, and then the heavy clouds above them

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w <».

s -

ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 127

broke, and through them burst the setting sun in all
the glory of silver, and purple, and ruddy gold.
Down on the barren hills, like a benediction, fell
his last rays, telling of hope for the morrow, and we
turned into the yard of the little inn, and the coolies
bowed themselves to the ground, one after the other,
because they got a pitiful little over and above their
hard-earned wages.

And the next day we went back to Peking, back
through the pass.

The Ching Er Hotel provided tiffin on the train,
curried chicken and mutton chops, some form of
cakey pudding, cheese, and bread and butter, all
excellent in its way — and we were all so amiable,
even the poet had come down from the clouds and
joined us, that we only laughed when we found we
were expected to pile all these good things on one
plate, and do it quickly before the train left!

As we were eating it, the guard came round and
collected one dollar and ninety cents extra apiece,
because we had ridden on the observation-car. We
paid, and said hard things about the millionaire, but
a little more knowledge of ways Chinese has con-
vinced me we accused him unjustly. I feel sure
that enterprising and observant guard took stock of
us, saw that we did not know the American, and
collected, for the benefit of a highly intelligent, and
truly deserving Chinese railway official.

We seldom think of the Chinaman with the
glamour of romance, but this Nankou Pass is well-
calculated to upset all our former ideas, and give us a
setting for China such as might apply to barbaric
Italy or Provence of the Middle Ages, only — and it
is well to remember, what we barbarians of the West

128 A WOMAN IN CHINA

are apt to forget — that in China, things have always
moved in mightier orbits, that where there were ten
men in the Western world, you may count a
hundred in China, for a hundred a thousand, for a
thousand ten thousand.

What must the Nankou Pass have been like on
some bitter night in winter, when the stars were like
points of steel, and the stream was frozen in a grip of
iron, and the still air was keen, and hard, and cold,
with the bitter, biting sting of the northern winter?
When the fires blazed in the beacons on the hill-
sides, flinging their ruddy light, their message of
fear and warning. The keepers of the Wall were
failing, the Mongol hordes were pouring over the
barrier, and it behoved every man who saw that
ruddy glare to arm and come to the keeping of the
Pass, to die in its guarding. They died and they
held it, and they died and the invaders flung their
bodies to the wolves and the crows, and swept on
and took the country beyond for their own.

But the country to the south is China, China of
the ages and she absorbs nations, Mongol or
Manchu, or men from her western bordersA and
makes them one with herself.

This is the message I read in the Nankou Pass.
I have changed my mind again and again, and
generally I do not believe what I read that day.
But it was firmly impressed on me then. China is
not dead. The spirit that conceived and built that
mighty Wall is a living thing still. All down the
Pass, alongside the age-old mule track, runs a new
road, a road of the West, a railway, planned, and
laid, and built entirely by Chinese without any
Western help except such as the sons of China got

ONE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS 129

for themselves in the schools of America and Eng-
land. And it is not only well and truly laid, as well
as, and better than, many a Western railway, but
behold the spirit of China has entered in, the spirit,
not of her poor, struggling for a crust of bread, a
mess of meal, but the spirit of the men who con-
ceived and planned the Wall, the beautiful Lama
Temple, or the spacious courtyards and glorious
palaces of the Forbidden City. They have built
embankments and curves, tunnels and archways that
are things of beauty, and glorious to look upon, as
surely never was railway before. They have built,
and it is saying a great deal, a railway that is worthy
of the Nankou Pass. They are the lineal descend-
ants of the men, who, two thousand years ago, built
the Great Wall. Hail and all hail!

And then a railway man talked to me. The rail-
way might be beautiful, but it was costly beyond all
excuse. The best of the ideas had come from
Europe, certainly these highly civilised, these over-
civilised people might be trusted to see and make
a beautiful thing, the question was, could they be
trusted to manage a railway as a railway should be
managed? He thought not. They had somehow
lost force. Well, we shall see. One thing seems
certain, between us Westerners and the Chinese, is
a great gulf fixed. We look across and sometimes
we wonder, and sometimes we pity, and sometimes
we admire, but we cannot understand.

CHAPTER VIII

TWO CHARITIES

The manufacturing of the blind — " Before born " — The Rev.
Hill Murray — " The Message " — Geography — Marriage — A
brave little explorer — Massacre of the blind — Deposits of one
tael — A missionary career — The charitable Chinese — A
Buddhist orphanage — Invitation to a funeral — An intellectual
abbot — The youngest orphan — Pity and mercy.

THE blind musician I had seen playing to the village
folk with the setting sun, that he could not see, on
his face, remained in my mind. Why especially, I
do not know, for it is a common enough sight in
China. Terrible as is the affliction, the Chinese, by
their insanitary habits, more or less manufacture their
blind. The cult of the bath is not theirs yet, they
live, apparently happily, amongst filthy surround-
ings, they neglect the eyes of the new-born child,
they suffer from smallpox, and ophthalmia, and the
barber with his infected razor shaves, not only close
round the outside, but with the laudable intention of
making all clean and neat, as far down as he can get
round the delicate inside of the eyelid. The result
one may see any day in the streets of Peking, or any
Chinese town. A beggar in China is always a
horrible-looking object. He belongs to a guild.
His intention is to attract pity, and it would seem
to him going the wrong way about it, to begin by
being neat and clean. Besides, though many people

130

TWO CHARITIES 131

in China are neat, I suspect very few of them are
what we arrogant Westerners would describe as
clean, and among a dirty people, the blind beggar
stands out, pre-eminent, as the filthiest creature I
have ever seen. On the roadside, again and again
in a country place where many people are passing, I
have seen a half-naked man, who looked as if he
had never since his birth even looked at water, clad,
or rather half-clad, in filthy rags with raw red sores
where his eyes should have been. He was so
horrible, so ghastly a specimen of humanity that he
seemed almost beyond pity. And yet a blind person
always receives a certain amount of respect and con-
sideration from the Chinese, even from the poorest
Chinese. Never in his hearing would the roughest
rickshaw coolie call him " Hsia Tze " that is " Blind
man." That would be discourteous. Though he
be only a beggar, forlorn, hungry, unkempt, he is
still addressed by all passers as " Hsien Sheng,"
" Before Born," a title of respect that is given to
teachers, doctors, and men of superior rank and
age.

Hard though, in spite of the respect that is paid
them, must be the lot of those who are handicapped
by the loss of sight. It Is hard in any land, but in
China, where even among those in full possession of
their senses, there are hundreds of thousands just
on the verge of starvation, the touch needed to send
a man over the brink is very, very slight indeed.
Not even the close family ties of the Chinese can
help them much, for where the strongest suffer, the
weak must go to the wall. And there are very few
crafts open to the blind man. He may be a story-
teller, or a fortune-teller, or a musician, I cannot

132 A WOMAN IN CHINA

imagine what he would do if his talents did not run
in those lines, and even then he is dependent upon
the doles of a people who have very, very little to
give away, and naturally guard that little carefully.
Once blind there is nothing more to be done. The
beautiful blue sky of China, the golden sunshine
have gone, and in its place there is the darkness,
warm sometimes, bitter cold sometimes, the envelop-
ing darkness that means for so many helplessness
and starvation, often at the very best semi-starvation,
borne with the uncomplaining stoicism of the
Chinese.

Now once upon a time a man stood upon the
Beggars' Bridge in Peking, outside the walls of the
Tartar City, selling Bibles, and noticed as everyone
must do, the number of blind who passed by. Was
there none to pity, asked the Rev. Hill Murray,
none among all those who had devoted their lives to
bringing the Gospel to the heathen to help?

"What?" said some. "When you know that
already the Chinese declare we missionaries take the
children for the sake of making medicine of their
eyes, will you give colour to the accusation by setting
up a mission to the blind ? " And then, when he
still persisted, " They need us, they need us," they
said : " Since you are so keen, why don't you do it
yourself?"

To him it was " The Message." Why should he
not do it himself? And there and then he set to
work. It was years ago. What the cost, what the
struggle, I do not know. I only know that one
sunny April day wandering round Peking in a hu
t'ung in the east of the Tartar City I came upon the
house, or rather, for it is all done Chinese fashion,

MISSION TO THE BLIND, PEKING.

GIRLS AT MISSION TO THE BLIND.

TWO CHARITIES 133

the nest of little houses with their courtyards and
little gardens, that is the Mission to the Blind.

The Rev. Hill Murray is gone to his rest, but his
wife and daughters keep up the Mission, waiting for
the time when his young son, away in England train-
ing, shall be ready to take his place. Fifty pupils,
boys and girls, the missionaries send in from the
various stations, and here they are taught, taught
to read and write according to the Braille system,
taught to play musical instruments, and prepared
for being preachers, which of course the mission-
aries consider the most important avocation of all.
I, in my turn, am only concerned that the unfor-
tunate should be happy, or as happy as he can be
under the circumstances, and I should think that the
preacher, the man who feels himself of some impor-
tance in spite of his affliction, competent to instruct
his fellows in what, to him, is a matter of deep
moment, has possibly the best chance of happiness.
The girls are taught much the same as the boys, and
in addition to knit, and such household work as they
are capable of.

It seemed to me sad, when I went there one bright
sunny morning, that these young things should be
for ever in the dark, but I am bound to say it was
only my thoughts that were sad. The girls came
laughing into the front courtyard with their knitting
in their hands to see — see, save the mark! — 'the
stranger, and have their photographs taken. The
sun, the golden sun of April, streamed down on the
stone-paved courtyard, all the plants in pots were in
bloom, and the girls, dressed in Chinese fashion,
made deep obeisance in the direction they were told
I was. All around were the quaint roofs, dainty

134 A WOMAN IN CHINA

lattice-work windows, and Eastern surroundings of
a Chinese house, and the girls were grave at first,
because they were being introduced to an older
woman, and one whom they thought was their
superior, therefore they thought it was not fitting
they should laugh and talk, but when I remarked
on their gravity, Miss Murray, shepherding them,
laughed.

" Oh they are very happy. They don't feel their
lot, not yet at any rate. They are proud because
they have learned so much. They can read and
write, they can knit, and they have learned
geography."

Geography seemed a great asset, and presently,
they, when they knew they might, were laughing and
talking, and saying how proud they were to have
their photographs taken. They sat there knitting,
and even while they talked, did exactly what they
were told, for like all Chinese, they have a great
sense of the fitting. On one occasion a friend
brought in a gramophone and set it going for their
amusement.

" I could have shaken them all," said Miss Murray,
" they received the funniest sallies in solemn silence,"
and when the entertainer was gone, she reproached
them, " You never even smiled."

A dozen eager voices responded. " Oh but it
was so hard not to laugh. We wanted to so much,
but we thought it would not be right. It was so
hard."

The lot of all women in China is hard; doubly
hard, it seemed to me, must the lot of these poor
little girls be, cut off from the only hope of happiness
a Chinese woman has, the chance of bearing a son.

TWO CHARITIES 135

" And they can never marry," I said sorrowfully to
Miss Murray.

There came a smile into her bright young eyes.
" Oh, I don't know. Some of them may. They
are so very well-educated, and the Chinese admire
education, and in a Chinese household, where there
are so many people to do the work, a blind wife
would not be so useless. Only the other day we
heard of the marriage of one of our girls."

And I looked at them again with other eyes, and
hoped there were many households that would like
a wife for their son who knew geography.

We went from the outer to the inner courtyard, a
rock garden where, in true Chinese fashion, are set
out plants and rockeries, a little winding river with
a stone bridge across it, a miniature lake — there is
no water in it now — and many creeping plants hiding
the stones. It is a charming spot, but naturally the
blind are not allowed to go there by themselves. It
is too dangerous. However, on one occasion, one
curious little boy objected to these restrictions, and
went on an exploring expedition on his own account.
Groping about in the darkness, he fell into the river,
which has steep cement sides, and out of that he
could not get. You would think that he would have
yelled lustily to call attention to his predicament, but
that is not the Chinese way. He had disobeyed,
Fate was against him, and he must suffer, and there
he lay the livelong day without a murmur, and not
till they called the roll in the evening, was his
absence discovered, and a search for him instituted.
Even that lesson was not sufficient, for once again
he was missing, and once again he was discovered
fallen into one of the many traps of the rock garden.

136 A WOMAN IN CHINA

It was unexplored country to him, and he was willing
to risk much to see what it was like.

In the parts of the house with which they are
familiar they can all run about, up and down steps,
and in and out of courtyards and down passages as
easily as people with sight. The boys came out of
their class-rooms where they learn to read, and write,
and sing, and play the harmonium, and raced about
much as other boys in other lands would do.

They have two meals a day — one in the morning
and one at four o'clock in the afternoon, and as muc a
tea and bread at other times as they care to have.
Mrs Murray apologised for the dampness of the
stones of the dining-room floor. It is a Chinese
house, and stone floors are not a sign of poverty.
These stones are damp because at twelve o'clock the
boys come and pour themselves out cups of tea,
and naturally they make a mess. The cook is busy,
he cannot be with them always. For this charity is
run on very simple lines, and the people who see
are very few. There is the cook and the house-
coolie, a woman for the girls, a doorkeeper, frail and
old, he may be seen standing just outside the door
in the picture of the hu t'ung, and a couple of men
who attend to the making of the Braille books, for
their making and binding requires the attention of
someone with sight. But with these exceptions, the
blind have it all to themselves ; they learn, and they
play, and they eat by themselves.

In one of the pictures I have taken, the boys have
come out of school and are playing cat and mouse.
All join hands in a circle, and one boy creeping in
and out softly is chased by another. How they
manage it in their darkness I don't know, but they

TWO CHARITIES 187

chattered, and laughed, and shouted happily though
what they said of course I did not know. They
are all, boys and girls alike, dressed in the ordinary
blue cotton of the country ; the boys had their hair
cut short, for nowadays the queue, that most curious
of fashions in the dressing of hair, is going out. The
girls were also dressed like the peasants, with their
trousers neatly drawn in at the ankles and their
smooth, straight hair drawn back and plaited in a
tail down the back, much like an English schoolgirl ;
the little ones though, have their heads shaven in
front, very ugly, but in conformation with Chinese
custom, which always shaves part at least of the
little one's head.

In the courtyard where the boys were playing,
was a rocking-horse, a dilapidated and battered toy
without either tail, or mane, or eyes. And this toy
is pathetic, when you know its history. It was
bought with the pennies saved by Mr Hill Murray's
children. They, too, out of their small store,
wanted to do something for the blind ; and the blind
children, immediately it came into their possession,
took out its eyes. They were not going to have the
rocking-horse spying on them when they could not
see themselves.

They all wisely live in native fashion. Their food
is the food of the well-to-do lower classes, plenty of
bread, steamed instead of being baked, and plenty
of vegetables and soup, with just a little meat in it ;
the food to which they have been accustomed, and
which they like best. Their beds, I have tried to
depict one, are just the ordinary k'ang, a stone plat-
form to hold three in summer, and five in winter.
Under it is a small fireplace where a fire can be built

138 A WOMAN IN CHINA

to warm it, above, it is covered with matting, and
each boy spreads his own bed of quilted cotton,
which is rolled up in the daytime.

I would have thought that the Mission to the Blind
was so good and great a thing that it could rouse no
bitter feelings in any breast. It has for its object
the succouring of those whom the Chinese them-
selves treat with great respect, yet so fanatical was
the Boxer outbreak, that in the hu t'ung outside the
Mission, forty of the pupils and their teachers, help-
less in their affliction, were done to death by those
who would have none of the Westerner and his
works, even though those works were works of
mercy.

More often, perhaps, in China than anywhere in
the world where I have been, am I reminded of the
passage in Holy Writ that tells how as the Man of
Pity came nigh unto Jericho a certain blind man
sat by the wayside begging. And, hearing the multi-
tude pass by, he asked what it meant, and they told
him, " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." We may not
give sight to the blind nowadays, but if we walk in the
streets of Peking, and then turn in to the Mission
to the Blind with its kindly care for the helpless, and
its brightening of darkened lives, we know that that
man who stood on the Beggars' Bridge pitied, as
his Master had pitied before him. All that he could
do he has done, and those who have come after him
have followed faithfully in his footsteps, can any
man do more ? I think not. Truly I think not.

" What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee ? " asked
the Lord of the World of the blind beggar.

And he said, " Lord that I may receive my sight."

Those who charge themselves with the care of the

BLIND BOYS COMING OUT OF SCHOOL.

BLIND BOYS PLAYING "CAT AND MOUSE.1

TWO CHARITIES 189

blind may not give so royally now. Theirs is the
harder part, they tend and care with unfailing
patience, untiring diligence, and then they stand,
and wait.

I was so lost in my admiration for the Mission to
the Blind, that I began to think and to say, that
missionary enterprise, which I had always thought
should turn its attention to its own people, was at
least justified in this land of China, where no pro-
vision was made for the sick and afflicted, and where
charity was unknown. I said it very often, and
every foreigner approved, until at last, there came
one or two who promptly showed me the utter folly
of drawing deductions when I didn't know anything
about the facts.

The foreigner in China is divided into two camps.
He is either missionary or he is anti-missionary.
Both sides are keen on the matter. And, of course,
there are always two sides to every question, as the
little girl saw whose sympathies went out to the poor
lion, who hadn't got a Christian.

China needs medical missionaries, needs them as
badly as the city slums of London or New York;
and China is going to get them, for there are
thousands of people who think a deal more of the
state of the soul of the materialistic Chinaman than
they do of the starving bodies, and more than starved
intellects of the slum children of a Christian land.
Formerly the missionary had a worse time than he
has now. He came among a people who despised
him, and more than once he suffered martyrdom,
and even when there was no question of martyrdom,
some of the regulations he submitted to must have
been unpleasant. Unwisely I think, for you can

140 A WOMAN IN CHINA

never make a European look like a Chinaman, the
powers that ran the missionary societies, decided
that the missionary must wear Chinese dress, even
to the shaven head and the queue behind. A
hatchet-faced Scot with a fiery red pigtail, they say
was an awesome sight, certainly calculated to impress
the Celestial, though whether in the way the new-
comer intended I should not like to say. The
growing of a proper queue was, of course, a question
of months, and the majority of missionaries began
their career with a false one. A story is told of one
luckless young man in Shanghai who lost his, and
went about his business for some little time unaware
of the fact. When he did discover his loss he went
back on his tracks, searching for it at all the places
he had visited. At last he arrived at the Hong-
Kong and Shanghai Bank, and there, pinned high
on the wall, was his missing property, and attached
to it by some facetious clerk was the legend in great
letters that all might read : " Deposits of one tael not
accepted here ! " For the benefit of the uninitiated,
one tael is a sum of money, varying with the price of
silver, from half-a-crown to three shillings.

But those days are gone by. Nowadays mission-
ary societies are wiser, and the medical missionaries
are pleasant, cheerful, hard-working men and women
doing an immense amount of good among the suffer-
ing poor, so kindly, so thoughtful are they that I
grudge their services to the heathen when I think how
many of the children, aye and those who are not
children, in the mean streets of the great cities of the
West need their services. They trouble themselves
about the souls of the people too, and the example of
kindly lives must be good. Again I grudge it all to

TWO CHARITIES 141

the Oriental, though I have come to realise that there
are many ways of doing good in the world. I do
occasionally feel that the missionaries are a little
too strenuous in inculcating prayer and praise, and
exhorting to a virtue that is a little beyond the
average mortal. The caring for both bodies and
souls can certainly be overdone. However I dare
say it all works right in the end, and I, who do
nothing, should be the last to judge. Still sometimes
I could not but remember the picture of the two
babies discussing the situation, the fat, plump baby,
and the thin, miserable, scrawny one.

Said the thin baby : " How do you manage to keep
so fat? My milk's sterilised, and the milkman's
sterilised, and even the cart's sterilised, and yet
look at me," and he stretched out his thin, starved
hands.

" Ah, so's mine," said the fat baby serenely, " but,
when no one's looking, I climb down and get a chew
at the corner of the floor-rug, and get enough bacteria
to keep a decent life in me ! "

Listening to the talk of the missionaries, hearing
of the foolishness of smoking, the wickedness of
alcoholic drinks, and various forms of sinfulness, I
have rather hoped, and more than suspected, that the
converts sometimes got down and had a chew at the
corner of the floor-rug when no one was looking.

Not that many of the missionaries don't endeavour
to live up to their own moral code, many of them do,
and many of them lead lives of abnegation and self-
denial. We all know that the missionary of the
Church of Rome gives up everything, and expects
never again to see his country once he enters the
mission-field, and many of the China Inland Mission-

142 A WOMAN IN CHINA

aries, except in the matter of celibacy, run them close.
Their pay is very, very small, no holidays can be
counted upon, and their lives are isolated and lonely.
Even the American missionary, who is far better
paid, gives up his own individuality. The ministers
earn more, I believe, than they would in their own
country, because people give gladly to missions,
while at home the minister's salary is often a burning
question. " Far fields are ever fair," but a clever
surgeon who is kept hard at it from dawn to dark,
once the Chinese appreciate him, certainly receives
far less than he could earn working for himself. He
is given a comfortable home, he may marry and have
children without a qualm, for, for every child twenty
pounds a year is allowed till he is of age ; the societies
see to it that a six weeks' holiday is given every year,
and a year's furlough every seven years with passage
paid home for wife and children. No business firm
could afford to make more comfortable provision for
its employees.

In China, service is cheap and good, the food and
the cooks both excellent, and the climate, at least
in the north, exhilarating and delightful. But the
missionaries do their duty, and do it well, and they
are pioneers of Western civilisation. In their wake
comes trade, though that is the last thing the
majority of them think about. The only trouble for
the American missionary seems to me the danger
that hangs over every dweller in China — a danger
they share with every other foreign resident. It is
hard to think of danger when one looks at the
courteous, subservient Chinese, but Sir Robert
Hart put it succinctly : " Anything may happen at
any time in China." And for all the New Republic,

TWO CHARITIES 148

and for all the fair promise, his words are still
worthy of attention.

" Do you really think," said R. F. Johnston, the
well-known writer on things Chinese, " that the
Chinese knew nothing about charity till it was
preached to them by Christian missionaries ? "
I intimated that such had been my faith.
" The Chinese," said he, a little indignantly, " are
one of the most charitable peoples on earth."

And then he told me what I, a stranger and
ignorant of the language, might have gone years
without learning. To begin with, family ties are far
stronger in China than in European countries, and a
man feels himself bound to help his helpless relatives
in a way that would seem absurd to the average
Christian, and in addition there are numerous
societies for helping those, who, by some mischance,
have no one upon whom they can depend. There
are societies for succouring the sick, societies for
looking after orphans, and other kindly institutions.
There are even societies for paying poor folks' fares
across ferries! There certainly are a good many
rivers in China, but this society I must admit strikes
me as a work of supererogation. I don't think much
merit can really attach to the subscribers, for the
majority of poor folks I have seen would be so
much better for walking through the river, clothes
and all.

However, we have a good few foolish charities of
our own, and even if the Chinese charities do not
cover all the ground, we must remember that China
is, in so many things, archaic; and these charities
run on archaic lines are naturally shocking to men
steeped in the sanitary lore of the West,

144 A WOMAN IN CHINA

We have only to read the novels of Charles
Dickens and Charlotte Bronte to see a few flaws in
the way the chanties of the Early Victorian era were
administered ; what would we think if we could take
a peep into thetlazar-house of the Middle Ages — yet
there were kind hearts, I doubt not, in the Middle
Ages — and China, with her overflowing population,
is yet in the matter of charity where we were some
time about the reign of the seventh Henry. Could
we expect much ?

" Would you like to see a Buddhist Orphanage ? "
asked Mr Johnston.

I said I would, and he promised to take me to
one they were trying to run on Western lines.

It was a pleasantly warm Sunday, with a wind
blowing that lifted the filthy dust of Peking from
the roadways, and flung it in our faces. We inter-
viewed first two rickshaw coolies with a view to
ascertaining whether they knew where we wanted to
go, or rather he interviewed them, for I have no
Chinese. They swore they did, by all their gods.
Still he looked doubtful.

"Why don't you take them?" said I, feeling
mistakenly that nowhere else in the town could the
dust and the wind be quite so bad as just outside the
Wagons Lits Hotel.

" Because I want to find out if they really know
where we want to go. They always swear they do,
for fear of losing the job."

However, at last we set out with rickshaw coolies
who seemed to have a working knowledge of the
route we wished to follow, and we went through
the Chien Men into the Chinese City, and away to
the west through a maze of narrow alley-ways, hung

TWO CHARITIES 145

with long Chinese signs, past the closely packed,
one-storied shops where they sold china and earthen-
ware, cotton goods and food-stuffs, lanterns, and
rows of uninteresting Chinese shoes. The streets
of course were thronged. There were rickshaws,
laden donkeys, broughams with Venetian shutters to
shut out the glare, the clanging bell and outrider to
tell that some important man was passing, mules,
camels, men on foot with or without burdens, with
bamboos across their shoulders and loads slung from
them, and some few women tottering along on
maimed feet. And every man was giving his opinion
on things in general to the universe at the top of
his voice.

" How I wish I could understand what they were
saying," I said to my companion once, when the
exigencies of the way brought our rickshaws side
by side.

He laughed. " Sometimes it's as well you
shouldn't." And then he corrected himself lest I
should have got a wrong impression. " No, on the
whole they are very polite to each other."

Once we came upon a man with a packet of
papers in his hand. He was standing upon some-
thing to raise him a little above the passing crowd,
and distributing the papers not to everyone, but
apparently with great discrimination. Both of us
were deemed worthy of a sheet, and I wondered
what on earth the hieroglyphics could mean. It
was an invitation to a funeral, my cicerone informed
me, the next time we were in speaking distance.
Some woman, who had been working for a broader
education for women, had died, and her friends were
going to mark their appreciation of her labours by

K

146 A WOMAN IN CHINA

a suitable funeral. So is the change coming to
China.

As we went on the houses grew fewer, there were
open spaces where kaoliang and millet were being
reaped, for this, my second charity, I visited in
September, the grey walls of the city rose up before
us, and still there was no sign of the monastery.
Our men were panting, the sweat was running down
their faces and staining their thin coats, still they
dragged us on, never dreaming of using the tongues
Nature had given them to lighten their labours. To
ask the way would have been to show the foreigner
in the rickshaw that they had not known it in the
first instance, and that would be to lose face.

But one of the foreigners had grasped that
already, and he insisted on the necessary inquiries
being made, and presently we had gone back on
our tracks and were at the monastery, being received
by the abbot who had charge of it, and a tall
Chinese, who spoke German, and was deeply inter-
ested in the Orphanage.

It was the great day of the year, for they were
having their annual sports. Over the entrance
gateway was a magnificent decoration to mark the
event. The place was built Chinese fashion, with
many courtyards and low-roofed houses round them,
and we were led from one courtyard to another until
at last we arrived at a large courtyard, or rather
playground. Here were the monks and their
charges, and a certain number of spectators who
had been invited to see the show, all men, for men
and women do not mingle in China, and the next
day the entertainment would be repeated with
women only as spectators. I received a warm

Q u

If

TWO CHARITIES 147

invitation to come again, but I felt that once would
be enough. We sat down on a bench with a table in
front of us, a boy was told off to keep us supplied
with tea, and I had leisure to look around me and
see what manner of people were these among whom
I had come.

There are thirty monks here, and they have
charge of two hundred and fifty orphans whom they
teach to read and write, and all the useful trades,
give them, in fac^ a good start in the world, and
the best of chances to earn their own living. The
bright sunshine was everywhere, the walls in a
measure shut out the wind and the dust, and the
sports were in full swing. At the upper end of
the ground, in a room overlooking the play, sat the
abbot and some of his subordinates. They wore
loose gowns of some dark material girt in at the
waist, their only ornament, if ornament it could be
called, was a rosary, and head and face were abso-
lutely bare of hair. The abbot from a neighbouring
monastery was introduced to me too, a man with a
pleasant, thoughtful, cultured face and the most
beautiful milk-white teeth. I was sorry I could not
speak to that man. I felt somehow as if we might
have met on a plane where nationalities and race
count for little ; but that would have been due to
his culture and broadmindedness, not to mine.

Then there were the orphans. They were fat,
well-fed looking little chaps dressed in unbleached
calico trousers, and coats of the very brightest blue
I have ever seen. Each wore on his breast, as a
mark of the festive occasion, a bright pink carnation,
and every head was shaven as bare as a billiard ball.
They looked happy and well, but to my Western

148 A WOMAN IN CHINA

eyes that last sanitary precaution, as I suppose it
was, spoiled any claim they had to good looks.
They ran races, they jumped about in sacks, they
picked up hoops, they stood in clusters of six and
sang in shrill young voices, weird and haunting
songs that I was told were patriotic and full of hope
for China. The three first in the races had their
names proclaimed in black characters on white flags
that were carried round the grounds, and there and
then received their prizes, a handkerchief or some
such trifle.

It was interesting not so much for the sports
themselves, those may be better seen in any well-
regulated boys' school, but because this is the first
time such efforts have been made in China, and
made by the Chinese themselves. That a man
should take any violent exercise, unless he were
absolutely obliged, that he should have any ideal
beyond looking fat, and sleek, and well-fed, is
entirely contrary to all received Chinese ideas, and
must mark a great step in their advancement.

And then they brought me the youngest orphan,
a wee, fat boy of eight, and though he looked well,
he seemed much younger. Probably he was. As
I understand it, the Chinese counts himself a year
old in the year he is born, and the first New Year's
day adds another year to his life, so that the child
born on the last day of the old year, would on New
Year's Day, be two years old! There is something
very lovable about a small child, and there was
about this little smiling chap, though he was unbe-
comingly dressed in coat and trousers of unbleached
calico, and his head was shaven bare. He held out
his hand to me when he was told, bowed low when

TWO CHARITIES 149

I gave him a little piece, a very little piece, of money,
and then trotted across the grounds to where a
young monk was looking on at the show. He
caught hold of the monk's robe, and nestled against
him, and the man put down a tender hand and
caressed him. No child of his own, by his vows,
would he ever have, but he was a tender father to
this little lonely waif. A waif? He was well-fed,
he was suitably clad, and here I saw with my own
eyes he had tenderness, could any child have had
more? Could men do more? And again I say, as
I said when I looked at the Mission to the Blind, I
think not. Very surely I think not. At least one
of these monks was giving what no Westerner could
possibly give to a child of an alien race, that
tenderness that softens and smooths life. "They
brought young children to Him, that He should
touch them . . . and He took them up in His arms,
put His hands upon them, and blessed them."

These monks profess a faith that was old when
Christianity was born, but they are carrying out as
faithfully as ever did any follower of Christ His
behests. What matter the creed? What matter
by what name we call it? Away in this old Eastern
city here, they are preaching, in deeds, the gospel
of love and kindness, and no man can do more.

We are apt to think that charity and pity are
attributes of the Christian faith only but that is to
insult the many good and holy men of other faiths.
I am not scorning the kindness and self-sacrifice of
the Christian missionary, but it is better, where it
is possible, that charity and pity for the Chinese
should come from those of their own race. For,
however tender and kind an alien may be, he still

150 A WOMAN IN CHINA

stands outside, and the recipient to a certain extent
is necessarily alone. Therefore am I doubly grate-
ful to Mr Johnston for taking me to this Orphanage,
where I could see how good the Chinese could be
to the waifs and strays of their own people.

Pity and mercy belong not to the Western nations
alone. They come from the Most High, and are
common to all His people, Christian missionary
selling Bibles, and pitying the blind upon the
Beggars' Bridge, or Buddhist monk taking to his
heart the little forsaken child in the monastery of an
older faith in the Chinese City. For such love as
that we find in the world we, who look on, can only
bow our heads and give thanks.

CHAPTER IX

A CHINESE INN

The start for Jehol— Tuatk — A Peking cart— Chinese roads — A
great highway — Chances of camping out — " Room for ten
thousand merchant guests "—Human occupancy — Dust of
ages — Eyes at the window — Catering for the journey — The
Chinese chicken, minced.

THERE were two places that I particularly wanted
to go to when I could make up my mind to tear
myself away from the charms of Peking. One was
the Tungling, or Eastern Tombs, the tombs where
the great Empress-Dowager and most of the
Manchu Emperors were buried, and Jehol, the
Hunting Palace of the Manchus, away to the north
in Inner Mongolia, or on the outermost edge of the
Province of Chihli, for boundaries are vague things
in that out-of-the-way part of the world. I won-
dered if I could combine them both, if instead of
coming back to Peking after visiting the tombs I
might make my way over the mountains to Jehol.
With that end in view I instituted inquiries, only to
find that while many people knew a man, or had
heard of several men who had been, I never struck
the knowledgeable man himself. The only thing
was to start out on my own account, and I knew
then I should soon arrive at the difficulties to be
overcome, not the least of them was two hundred

152 A WOMAN IN CHINA

and eighty miles in a Peking cart. The only draw-
back to that arrangement was that if I didn't like
the difficulties when I did meet them, there could
be no drawing back. They would have to be
faced.

Accordingly I engaged a servant with a rudi-
mentary knowledge of English. When the matter
we spoke of was of no importance, such as my
dinner, I could generally understand him, when it
was of importance, such as the difficulties of the
way, I could not, but I guessed, or the events them-
selves as they unfolded became explanatory. This
gentleman was a small person with noble views on
the subject of squeeze, as it pertained to Missie's
servant, and he wore on state occasions a long black
coat of brocaded silk, slit at the sides, and on all
occasions the short hairs that fringed the shaven
front of his head stood up like a black horsehair
halo. He was badly pock-marked, very cheerful,
and an excellent servant, engineering me over diffi-
culties so well that I had to forgive him the squeeze,
though in small matters I was occasionally made
aware I was paying not double the price, but seven
times what it ought to have been. However one
buys one's experience. He was my first servant
and I paid him thirty dollars a month, so I was
squeezed on that basis. A six months' stay in
China convinced me I could get as good a servant
for fifteen dollars a month, and feel he was well
paid.

His name was Tuan, pronounced as if it began
with a " D," and he engaged for me two Peking carts
with a driver each, and two mules apiece. One was
for myself and some of my luggage, the other took

A CHINESE INN 158

my servant, my humble kitchen utensils, and the
rest of my baggage; and one Sunday morning
in May, it is hardly necessary to say it was sunny,
because a dull morning in May in Northern China
is an exception hailed with joy, the carts appeared
at the door of the " Wagons Lits," and we were
ready to start. At least everything was ready but
me. I ached in every limb, and felt sure that I was
just beginning an attack of influenza. What was
to be done? I longed with a great longing for my
peaceful bed. I did not want to go venturing forth
into the, to me, unknown wilds of China, but I had
engaged those carts at the rate of seven dollars a
day for the two, and I felt that I really could not
afford to linger. Possibly the fresh air might do
me good. At any rate, I reflected thankfully, as I
climbed into the foremost cart, no active exertion
was required of me. And that only shows how
remarkably little I knew about a Peking cart. A
man and a girl of my acquaintance rose up early in
the morning to accompany me the first ten miles on
donkeys, we had tiffin together beneath the shade
of some pine-trees in a graveyard, and then they
wished me good-bye, and I started off with the
comfortable feeling that arises from the parting
good wishes of kind friends.

Now a Peking cart is a very venerable mode of
progression. When our ancestors were lightly-
dressed in woad, and had no conception of any
wheeled vehicle, the Chinese lady was paying her
calls sitting in the back of a Peking cart, the seat of
honour under the tilt, well out of the sight of the
passers-by, while her servant sat in front, the place
of comfort, if such a word can be applied to anything

154 A WOMAN IN CHINA

pertaining to a Peking cart, for in spite of its long
and aristocratic record if there is any mode of pro-
gression more wearying and uncomfortable I have
not met it. It is simply a springless board set on
a couple of wheels with a wagon tilt of blue cotton,
if you are not imperial, over it, and a place for heavy
luggage behind. The Chinaman sits on the floor
and does not seem to mind, but the ordinary
Westerner, such as I am, packs his bedding and all
the cushions he can raise around him, and then
resigns himself to his fate. It has one advantage
people will tell you, it has nothing to break in it,
but there are moments when it would be a mighty
relief if something did break, for if the woodwork
holds together, as it tosses you from side to side,
you yourself are one sore, bruised mass. No, I
cannot recommend a Peking cart, even on the
smoothest road.

And the roads in China are not smooth. We all
know the description of the snakes in Ireland,
" There are no snakes," and if in the same manner
could be described the roads in China, blessed
would the roads in China be, but as China is a
densely populated country there are so-called roads,
upon which the people move about, but I have
seldom met one that was any better than the sur-
rounding country, and very, very often on this
journey did I meet roads where it was ease and
luxury to move off them on to the neighbouring
ploughed field. The receipt for a road there in the
north seems to be : Take a piece of the country that
is really too bad to plough or to use for any agricul-
tural purposes whatever, that a mountain torrent,
in fact, has given up as too much for the water,

1 1

LEAVING THE WAGONS LITS FOR THE MOUNTAINS.

A STREET STALL.

A CHINESE INN 155

upset a stone wall over it, a stone wall with good
large stones in it, take care they never for a moment
lie evenly, and you have your road.

Leaving Peking for the Eastern Tombs you go
for the first two or three hours along a paved way
of magnificent proportions, planned and laid out as
a great highway should be. The great stones
with which it is paved were probably put there
by slave labour, how many hundred years ago I do
not know, but the blocks are uneven now, some
of them are gone altogether, though how a huge
block of stone could possibly disappear passes my
understanding, and whenever the carter could, he
took tHe cart down beside the road, where at least
the dust made a cushion for the nail-studded wheels,
and the jarring and the jolting were not quite so
terrible.

It takes as long to get beyond the environs of
Peking in a cart as it does to get out of London in
a motor-car. First we passed through the Baby-
lonish gate, and the great walls were behind us,
then, outside the city, all looking dusty, dirty,
and khaki-coloured in the brilliant sunshine, were
numerous small houses, and the wayside was lined
with booths on which were things for sale, green
vegetables and salads looking inviting, if I could
have forgotten the danger of enteric, unappetising-
looking meat, bones, the backbones of sheep from
which all flesh had been taken, eggs, piles of cakes
and small pies, shoes, clothes, samovars, everything
a poor man in a primitive community can possibly
require, and along the roadway came an endless
array of people, clad for the most part in blue
cotton, men walking, men with loads slung from a

156 A WOMAN IN CHINA

bamboo across their shoulders, donkeys laden with
baskets, with sacks of grain, with fat Chinese on
their backs, with small-footed women being trans-
ported from one place to another; there were Peking
carts, there were mules, there were ponies ; and this
busy throng is almost the same as it was a couple
of thousand years ago. I wondered ; could I have
taken a peep at the outskirts of London in the days
of Elizabeth of happy memory, would it not have
been like this? But no. The sky here is bright
and clear, the sunshine hot, and the faces of the
moving crowd are yellow and oriental. This
crowd is like the men who toiled round the quarries
of Babylon or Nineveh, and it is perhaps more
satisfied with itself and its position in the universe
than any like company of people anywhere in the
world. That impression was forced upon me as I
sfayed in Peking, it grew and grew as I got farther
away from the great city, and out into the country.
But it was a long, long while before I could feel
I was really in the country. There was the khaki-
coloured land, there were the khaki-coloured houses
built of mu3 apparently, with graceful, tiled roofs,
and blue-clad people everywhere, and everywhere
at work. Always the fields were most beautifully
tilled, there were no fences, the Chinese is too
civilised to need a fence, and when you see stone
walls it is only because, since they can't be dropped
off the planet into space, the stones must be dis-
posed of somehow, here and there the kaoliang was
coming up like young wheat, in vivid green patches
that were a relief from the general dust, and occa-
sionally there were trees, willow or poplar or fir,
delightful to look upon, that marked a graveyard,

A CHINESE INN 157

and then, just as I was beginning to hope I was out
in the country, a walled town would loom up.

And in the dusk of the evening we stopped and
met for the first time the discomforts of a Chinese
inn.

We had started rather late, and I had spent so
much time bidding farewell to my friends, that we
did not reach the town we had intended to, but put
up at a smalt inn in a small hamlet. This, my first
inn was, like most Chinese inns, a line of one-storied
buildings, built round the four sides of a large
courtyard. Mixed up with the rooms were the
stalls for the beasts, the mules and the little grey
donkeys, with an occasional pony or two, and the
courtyard was dotted with stone or wooden mangers.
In the pleasant May weather there was no need to
put all the beasts under cover, and there were so
many travellers there was not room in the stalls for
all the beasts.

It was all wonderfully Eastern. I remembered,
I could not but remember, how once there arrived
at such an inn a little company, weary and tired,
and " so it was, that while they were there, the days
were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her first-born son, and
wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a
manger: because there was no room for them in
the inn."

I thought of that little company as the Peking
cart jolted over the step that is on the threshold of
all Chinese doors — no one considers comfort in
China, what is a jolt more or less, a Peking cart will
not break — and I found myself in the courtyard^,
and a trestle was brought for me to get down from

158 A WOMAN IN CHINA

the cart. I might have jumped, I suppose, but
one hundred li, about thirty miles, had left me stiff
and aching in every limb. My head ached too with
the influenza, and when I inspected the room
offered for my accommodation, I only wished
drearily that there had been no room in this par-
ticular inn, and that I might have slept out in the
open.

But that first day as I went across the plain, that
while there were no hills upon it rose slowly towards
the hills, I realised that in China, there is not the
charm of the open road, you may not sleep under
the sky, you must put up at an inn, you would as
soon think of camping out in one of the suburbs
of London. Indeed you might easily find more
suitable places for camping about Surbiton or
Richmond than you would among the sterile hills
or cultivated valley bottoms of Northern China. I
hoped against hope for three days. I had a com-
fortable sleeping-bag and the nights were fine, it
seemed it would be so simple a thing to camp a little
off the roadside, even though I had no tent, and that
first night, when I smelled the smell of the rooms,
rank and abominable, and reeking of human occu-
pancy, I envied my mules, and said that as I got
farther into the country I could certainly sleep
outside.

" Room for ten thousand merchant guests," said
the innkeeper in characters of black on red paper
over his door, and unless those merchants were
very small indeed, I am sure I don't know where
he proposed to put them. I remembered with a
shudder, that one man of my acquaintance had said :
"What I cannot stand is the perpetual tramp,

A CHINESE INN 159

tramp, all night," and I had my suspicions that the
guests were small on this occasion, and I feared
lest they were going to be catered for. There were
also notices in the effective red and black that the
landlord would not be responsible for any valuables
not confided to his care, and exhorting the guests
to be careful of fire. And it seemed to me, as
I looked at the rotting thatch and the dubious
grey walls, that a fire in this inn would be the very
best thing that could happen to it. You see I was
specially particular this first night. I thought the
next inn might be better. I had a good deal to
learn. " The tiger from the Eastern Hills and the
tiger from the Western Hills," says the Chinese
proverb, " are both the same." So everywhere a
Chinese inn is about as bad as it can be. They are
mostly used by carters, and well-to-do people always
go to temples, when they are available. There
wasn't a temple about here, and I didn't know I
could have lodged there had there been one, so I
resigned myself to the inevitable, and wondered
with all the energy that was left in me what adverse
fate had set me down here. I might have gone
back, of course. In a way I was my own mistress ;
but after all, we none of us own ourselves in this
world. I had a book to write, and material for that
book was not to be got by staying comfortably in
the Wagons Lits Hotel, and therefore I very reluct-
antly peeped into a room from which clouds of dust
were issuing, and which smelt worse than any place
I had ever before thought of using as a bed-chamber
and dining-room combined. The dust was because
I had impressed upon the valued Tuan that I must
have a clean room, so he had importantly turned

160 A WOMAN IN CHINA

two coolies on to stir up the dust of ages, a
thousand years at least, I should say, there seemed
no end to it, and I wondered, in addition to the
merchant guests, what awful microbes were being
wakened out of their long sleep. Left alone, they
might have been buried so deep that they might not
have come high me ; but he was giving them all a
chance. After all it was only fair, a foreign woman
did not visit a Chinese inn every day of the week.
After more dust than I had ever seen before all at
once, had come out of that room, I instructed water
to be brought and poured on things in general, and,
when the turmoil had quieted down a little, I went
in and inspected my quarters.

They all bear a strong family resemblance to one
another, the rooms of these Chinese inns. I always
tried to get one that opened directly on to the court-
yard, as giving more chance of air. The Chinese, as
a rule, have not much use for fresh air. Tuan, had
he had his way, would have shut the door fast, as
being more correct and private, and then I should
have been in an hermetically sealed room, lighted all
along the courtyard side by a most dainty lattice-
work window covered with white tissue paper, or
rather tissue paper that had once been white. It
had been well-smoked during the winter, and a
considerable quantity of the dust that had been so
industriously stirred up, had lodged there. But air
I must have, so I had the paper stripped off from
the top of the window as far down as my desire
for privacy would allow. Below, the more daring
spirits, who had assembled to see the foreign
woman, wetted their fingers and poked them softly
through the bottom part of the window; and then

A CHINESE INN 161

an eye appeared, so that it really seemed at first as
if I might as well have been comfortable and had all
the paper off. I went outside, and let it plainly
be seen that I was very angry indeed, and then
Tuan, who had a great idea of my dignity, or rather
of his dignity, which was as nothing if I was of no
consequence, put one of the " cartee men " on guard,
and once more I retired to my uncomfortable
lodging. It had a stone floor, being quite a superior
sort of inn, the poorer sort have only beaten earth,
there were two wooden chairs of dark wood, high,
with narrow and uncomfortable seats, a table, also
uncomfortably high, and of course, the k'ang.
Most people know all about the k'ang now, but this
was my first introduction to it as a working piece of
furniture. It is a platform of stone about two feet
high, so constructed that a small fire lighted under-
neath, and a very small fire it is, carries the warmth,
by a system of flues, all over it. It is covered
generally with matting, and on it is always a k'ang
table, a little table about eighteen inches square and
a foot higfT, and, though this is not intentional,
covered with the grease of many meals.

I looked doubtfully at the k'ang this first day. It
seemed to me I could not lodge in such a place, and
I wished heartily that I had left the describing of
China to some more hardened traveller. There
was a grass mat upon it, hiding its stoniness, and I
had powdered borax sprinkled over it, about half a
tin of Keating's followed, though I am told the
insects in China rather like Keating's, and only then
did I venture to have my bed set up. Alongside
was placed my india-rubber bath, the gift of a friend,
and every night of that journey did I thank her with

L

162 A WOMAN IN CHINA

all my heart, it was so much nicer than my old
canvas bath, and making sure that the " cartee man "
was still on guard I proceeded to wash and undress
and creep into my sleeping-bag.

At only one Chinese inn where I stayed could
food for the traveller be had, and that was, I think,
only because it combined the functions of inn-
keeping and restaurant. In any case, of course,
the foreign traveller would not think of eating
Chinese food, and I, like everyone else, provided
my own. I brought with me rice, tea, and flour.
Tuan cooked for me on an absurd little charcoal
stove upon which I might have succeeded in boiling
an egg. With the exception of those few stores, I
lived off the country, buying chickens and eggs,
onions, and hard little pears ; Tuan doing the
buying, charging me at a rate that made me wonder
how on earth the " Wagons Lits " managed to board
and lodge its guests at £i a day. I used to think
that, for sheer toughness, the palm might be given
to the West African chicken, but I withdraw that
statement, he isn't in it alongside the Chinese.
We used to buy small birds about the size of a
pigeon, But an elderly ostrich couldn't have been
tougher. My teeth, thank Heaven, are excellent,
but the Chinese chicken was too much for them. I
then saw why Tuan had provided a chopper for
kitchen use, he called it " cookee knife," and the
fiat went forth — I would have no more chicken
unless it was minced.

But that first night I couldn't look at chicken, I
couldn't even laugh at the woodeny pears and rice
which were the next course. I declined everything,
lay in bed and drank tea, the wind came in through

INN YARD, PEKING CART IN FOREGROUND.

GOSSIPING.

A CHINESE INN 163

the open lattice-work, guttered my candle and then
blew it out, and I, first hot, and then cold, and
always miserable, stared at the luminous night sky,
cut into squares by the lattice-work of the window,
was conscious of every bone in my body, and
wondered if I were not going to be very ill indeed.

CHAPTER X

THE TUNGLING

A Peking cart as a cure for influenza — Difficulties of a narrow
road — The dead have right of way — The unlucky women —
Foot binding — ** Beat you, beat you " — Lost luggage —
" You must send your husband " — Letter- writing under
difficulties — A masterless woman — Malanyu — Most perfect
place of tombs in the world.

BUT I wasn't. As a rule I find I worry myself
unnecessarily in life. Either a thing can be altered,
or it can't. If it can't there's an end to the matter,
worrying doesn't mend it. I had come here of my
own free will — it wasn't nice, but there was nothing
to do but make the best of it. In the morning if I
wasn't very happy I was no worse, and to go back
that weary journey to Peking would only be to make
myself ridiculous. Therefore I arose with the sun,
and a nice, bright cheerful sun he was, looked at my
breakfast, drank the tea and was ready to start. All
the hamlet watched me climb into my cartA I felt
I couldn't have walked a step to save my life, and we
rumbled over that steep step, and were out in the
roadway again.

It is not the best way to view a country from a
Peking cart, for the tossing from side to side is apt
to engender a distaste for life and to encourage a
feeling that nothing would really matter if only the
cart would come to a standstill for a moment. Add
to that the aching head of influenza and that morn-

164

THE TUNGLING 165

ing I began to pity not only myself but my publisher,
for I began to fear he was going to lose money on
me. It was Byron, I think, who considered that
Providence or somebody else who shall be nameless
always took care of publishers, and that is the reason
perhaps why I have come to the opinion that a trip in
a Peking cart is really the best cure for influenza.
Had I gone to bed and had someone kind and nice
to wait upon me and bring me the milk and soda
and offer the sympathy my soul desired, I should
probably have taken a fortnight to get well; as it
was, out in the open air from dawn to dark, three
days saw the end of my woes, and even at the worst
I was able to sit up and take a certain amount of
interest in passing events.

Gradually, gradually, as we went on we seemed to
forget the great city that absorbed all things, and
the surroundings became more truly countrified.
The road, when it was not stones, was deep sand
with deep, deep ruts worn by the passing of many
carts, and it stretched over just as great a portion of
the country as the people would allow. Flat it was,
flat, and all along the way were little villages and
hamlets. There was no temptation to walk, for it
was very rough indeed, just the worn road and the
edge of the tilled fields, tilled as surely never before
in the world were fields tilled, and they stretched
away to the far distant blue hills. Occasionally the
road sank deep between them, and as it was very
narrow the traffic question was sometimes trouble-
some. On this day we met a country cart, a longer
cart than the Peking cart, covered in with matting
and drawn by a mule and a couple of donkeys.
Manifestly there was not room for the carts to pass

166 A WOMAN IN CHINA

and I wondered what would happen for, for either of
us, laden as we were, to go backwards would have
been difficult. I was requested to get out, which I
did reluctantly, my carts were drawn so close against
the bank that the right wheels were raised against
it, and then they tried to get the other cart past.
No good, it would not go. About a dozen men all
in dirty, very dirty blue, with pointed hats of grass
matting, looking as if they had stepped off old-
fashioned tea caddies, came and took an intelligent
interest, even as they might have done in Stafford-
shire, but that didn't make the carts any smaller, and
then they decided to drive the country cart up the
bank into the field above. They tried and tried,
they lashed that unfortunate mule and the donkeys,
but with all their pulling it was too heavy, up the
bank it would not go. Chinese patience was exem-
plified. But it was the mule and the donkeys that
really displayed the patience. I climbed the bank,
sat on a stone and watched them, and did not like to
give my valuable advice, because these men must
have been driving carts along these roads all their
lives, and presumably must know something about
it, while never in my life had I handled a team con-
sisting of two donkeys and a mule. At last when
they got an extra hard lashing and fell back, con-
quered once more, poor brutes, by the weight, I
rose up and interfered. I did not request — I
ordered. They were to take the two foremost mules
from my carts and hitch them on to the other cart.
My foremost mule protested, he evidently said he
had never been associated with donkeys before ; but
in two minutes they had got that cart to the higher
level, and we were free to go on our way, Why

THE TUNGLING 167

they did not do it without my ordering I am sure I
do not know, for as a rule I had no authority over
the carts, they went their own way — I was merely a
passenger.

Once more that day the narrow way was blocked,
this time by a funeral. The huge coffin was borne
by ten straining men, and there was no parleying
with it, the dead have right of way in China, and
out of the way we had to get. We backed with diffi-
culty till the bank on one side was a little lower, and
then up we went till we were on the cultivated land,
drove on till we were ahead of the corpse, and then
down again into the roadway once more.

In China, as far as I have been, you never get
away from the people, this country was far more
thickly populated than the country round London,
for I have walked in Surrey lanes and found no one
of whom to ask a question, while here there were
always people in sight. True, here were no leafy
lanes such as we find in Surrey and Kent, but the
whole country lay flat and outstretched till it seemed
as if nothing were hidden right up to the base of
the far away hills. The days were getting hot and
the men were working in the fields stripped to the
waist, while most of the little boys were stark naked,
pretty little lissom things they were, too, if they had
only been washed ; and the little girls, for all
clothing, wore a square blue pocket-handkerchief put
on corner-wise in front, slung round the neck and tied
round the waist with a bit of string ; but farther on,
in the mountain villages, I have seen the little girls
like the little boys, stark naked. Only the women
are clothed to the neck, whatever the state of the
thermometer. Always there were houses by the

168 A WOMAN IN CHINA

wayside, and many villages and hamlets, and the
women sat on the doorsteps sewing, generally it
seemed to me at the sole of a shoe, or two of them
laboured at the little stone corn mills, that were in
every village, grinding the corn, the millet, or the
maize, for household use. Sometimes a donkey,
and a donkey can be bought for a very small sum,
turned the stone, but usually it seemed that it was
the women of the household who, on their tiny feet,
painfully hobbled round, turning the heavy stone
and smoothing out the flour with their hands, so that
it might be smoothly and evenly ground.

Poor women! They have a saying in China to
the effect that a woman eats bitterness, and she
surely does, if the little I have seen of her life is
any criterion. As I went through the villages, in
the morning and evening, I could hear the crying
of children. Chinese children are proverbially
naughty, no one ever checks them, and I could not
know why these children were crying, some prob-
ably from the pure contrariness of human nature,
but a missionary woman, and a man who scorned
missionaries and all their works both told me that,
morning and evening, the little girls cried because
the bandages on their feet were being drawn more
tightly. Always it is a gnawing pain, and the only
relief the little girl can get is by pressing the calf of
her leg tightly against the edge of the k'ang. The
pressure stops the flow of blood and numbs the feet
as long as it is kept up, but it cannot be kept up
long, and with the rush of blood comes the increase
of pain — a pain that the tightening of the bandages
deepens.

" Beat you, beat you," cries the mother taking a

THE TUNGLING 169

stick to the little suffering thing, " you cry when I
bind your feet." For a Chinese woman must show
no emotion, above all she must never complain.
This, of course, is a characteristic of the nation.
The men will bear much without complaining.

I never grew accustomed to it. The pity and the
horror of it never failed to strike me, and if the
missionaries do but one good work, they do it in
prevailing on the women to unbind their feet, in
preventing unlucky little girls from going through
years of agony.

There is no mistaking the gait of a woman with
bound feet. She walks as if her legs were made of
wood, unbending from the hip downwards to tne
heels. The feet are tiny, shaped like small hoofs
about four inches long, encased in embroidered
slippers, and to walk at all she must hold out her
arms to balance herself. When I was laughed at
for my "pathetic note," and was told I exaggerated
the sufferings of the women, I took the trouble to
inquire of four doctors, three men and one woman,
people who came daily in contact with these women,
and they were all of one opinion, the sufferings of
the women were very great. The binding in girl-
hood was not only terribly painful but even after
the process was finished the feet were often diseased,
often sore and ulcerated, and at the very best the
least exertion, as is only natural, makes them ache.

" Try," said one doctor, " walking with your toes
crushed under your sole, the arch of your foot
pressed up till the whole foot is barely four inches
long, and you can only walk on your heel, and see
if you do not suffer — suffer in all parts of your body.
They say," he went on, " that while there are many

170 A WOMAN IN CHINA

peaceful, kindly old men among the Chinese, every
woman is a shrew. And I can well believe it.
What else could you expect? Oh women have a
mighty thin time in China. I don't believe there is
any place in the world where they have a worse."

If anyone doubts that this custom presses heavily
on the women, let him ask any doctor who has
practised much among the Chinese how many legs
he has taken off because the neglected sores of
ulcerated, bound feet have become gangrenous and
a danger to life.

" It really doesn't matter," said another doctor I
knew well, " a Chinese woman is just as well with
a pair of wooden legs as with the stumps the binding
has left her!"

As a rule I did not see the beginnings, for
though the women go about a little, the small girls
are kept at home. But once on this journey, at a
poor little inn in the mountains, among the crowd
gathered to see the foreign woman were two little
girls about eight or nine, evidently the innkeeper's
daughters. They were well-dressed among a ragged
crew. Their smocks were of bright blue cotton,
their neat little red cotton trousers were drawn in
at their ankles, and their feet, in tiny embroidered
shoes, were about big enough for a child of three.
There was paint on their cheeks to hide their piteous
whiteness, and their faces were drawn with that
haunting look which long-continued pain gives. As
they stood they rested their hands on their com-
panions' shoulders, and, when they moved, it was
with extreme difficulty. No one took any notice of
them. They were simply little girls suffering the
usual agonies that custom has ordained a woman

THE TUNGLING 171

shall suffer before she is considered a meet play-
thing and slave for a man. A woman who would
be of any standing at all must so suffer. Poor little
uncomplaining mites, they laughed and talked, but
their faces, white and strained under the paint,
haunted me the livelong night, and I felt that I who
stood by and suffered this thing was guilty of a
wicked wrong to my fellows.

And foot binding may result in death. There
was a child whose father, a widower, not knowing
what to do with his little girl, an asset of small value,
sold her to a woman of ill repute. The little slave
was five years old, but as yet, her feet had not been
bound. Her mistress of course took her in hand
and bound her feet, so that she might be married
some day. But her feet being bound did not exempt
small Wong Lan from her household duties. Every
morning, baby as she was, she had to get up, kindle
the fire, and take hot water to her mistress, who, in
her turn, did not give the attention they required
to the poor little feet. With feet sore, ulcerated and
dirty, she went about such household duties as a
little child could do, till they grew so bad she could
only lie about and moan, and was a nuisance to the
woman who had taken her. At last a man living
in the same courtyard had pity on her. He was a
mason and had worked at the great hospital the
foreigners had set up just outside the walls of the
city where they lived, and he took her in his arms,
a baby not yet seven, and brought her to the doctor.
She had cried and cried, he said, and he thought she
would die if she were left. The doctor when he
took her thought she was going to die whether she
were left or not. There and then he took a pair of

172 A WOMAN IN CHINA

scissors, snapped two threads and one foot was off,
still in its filthy little slipper. The whole leg was
gangrenous and they nursed the baby up for a week
till she was strong enough to have the leg amputated
at the hip. She grew better, though the doctor
shook his head over her. The missionaries decided
they had better keep her, and as she recovered, they
set about getting her crutches. A Chinese woman
evidently begins to be self-conscious very soon, for
the mite cried bitterly when they wanted to measure
her. The Chinese have a great horror of any
deformity, and she thought she would be an object
of scorn if she went about on crutches, and everyone
could see she had only one leg. Her idea was that
she should sit all day long on the k'ang, and then
it would be hidden. However, her guardians pre-
vailed, and presently she was hopping about the
missionary compound, and being a pretty, taking
little girl soon found friends who forgot, or what
was more important, taught Her to forget, that she
was crippled. Someone gave her a doll, and with
this treasure tucked under her arm, she paid visits
from one house to the other, happy as the day was
long, petted by Chinese and foreigners alike. But
the doctor who had shaken his head over her at first
was right. The poison was in her system, and in a
little over six months from the day she was brought
in to the hospital she died. Poor little mite! For
six months she had been perfectly happy. The man
who had brought her in made her a coffin, the aliens
who had succoured and cared for her laid her there
with the doll she had been so proud of in her arms,
and told all the Chinese who had known her they
might come and say a last farewell. They came,

THE TUNGLING 173

and then — oh curious human nature! — someone
stole the poor little makeshift doll from the dead
baby's arms !

Of course cruelty to children is a sin that is met
with in countries nearer home, is, in fact, more
common in Christian England than in heathen
China. This was a death that was attributable to
the low value that is set on the girl child and to the
cruel custom of binding the feet.

And not hundreds and thousands but millions of
women so suffer. The practice, they say, is dying
out among the more enlightened in the towns, but
in the country, within fifteen miles of Peking, it is in
full swing. Not only are these " golden lilies " con-
sidered beautiful., but the woman with bound feet is
popularly supposed to care more for the caresses of
her lord, than she with natural feet. Of course, a
man may not choose his wife, his mother does that
for him, he may not even see her, but he can, and
very naturally often does, ask questions about her.
The question he generally asks is not : " Has she a
pretty face?" but: "Has she small feet?" But if
he did not think about it, the women of his family
would consider it for him.

A woman told me, how, in the north of Chihli, the
custom was for the women of the bridegroom's
family to gather round the newly arrived bride who
sat there, silent and submissive, while they made
comments upon her appearance.

" Hoo ! she's ugly ! " Or worst taunt of all, " Hoo !
What big feet she's got ! "

Many will tell you it is not the men who insist
upon bound feet, but the women. And, if that is
so, to m,e it only deepens the tragedy. Imagine

174 A WOMAN IN CHINA

how apart the women must be from the men, when
they think, without a shadow of truth, that to be
pleasing to a man, a woman must be crippled. The
women are hardly to be blamed. If they are so
ignorant as to believe that no woman with large
feet can hope to become a wife and mother, what
else can they do but bind the little girls' feet?
Would any woman dare deprive her daughter of all
chance of wifehood and motherhood by leaving her
feet unbound? Oh the lot of a woman in China is
a cruel one, civilised into a man's toy and slave. I
had a thousand times rather be a negress, one of
those business-like trading women of Tarquah, or
one of the capable, independent housewives of Keta.
But to be a Chinese woman ! God forbid !

It seems very difficult to make a Chinaman under-
stand that a woman has any rights, even a foreign
woman, apart from a man. I remember being par-
ticularly struck with this once at Pao Ting Fu, the
capital of Chihli, a walled town about three hours
by rail from Peking. I lost a third of my luggage
by the way, because the powers that be, having
charged me a dollar and a half for its carriage,
divided it into three parts, and by the time I had
discovered in what corner the last lot was stowed,
the train was moving on, and I could only be com-
fortably sure it was being taken away from me at
the rate of twenty miles an hour. However, the
stationmaster assured Dr Lewis, the missionary
doctor with whom I was living, that it should be
brought back by the next day.

Accordingly, next day, accompanied by a coolie
who spoke no English, I wended my way to the
railway station and inquired for that luggage. The

TUG-OF-WAR, BUDDHIST ORPHANAGE.

( See page i.;tS)

MISSIONARY COMPOUND, LOOKING EAST.

THE TUNGLING 175

coolie had been instructed what to say, and I thought
they would simply bring me into contact with my
lost property. I would pay any money that was due,
and the thing would be finished. But I had not
reckoned on my standing, or want of standing, as a
woman.

Nobody could speak a word of English. In the
course of five minutes I should say, the entire station
staff of Pao Ting Fu stood around me, and vocifer-
ously gave me their views — on the weather and the
latest political developments for all I know. If it
was about the luggage I was no wiser. Some were
dressed in khaki, some in dark cloth with uniform
caps, and most had the wild hair that comes to the
lower classes with the cutting off of the queue.
There were about a dozen of them with a few idlers
in blue cotton, patched, dirty, faded, and darned,
and some of these wore queues, queues that had
been slept in for about a week without attention,
and they were all quite anxious to te nice to the
foreign woman, and took turns in trying to make
her understand. In vain. What they wanted I
could not imagine. At last a lane opened, and I
guessed the vociferating crowd were saying : " Here
is the very man to tackle the situation." There came
along a little man in dark cloth who stood before me
and in the politest manner laid a dirty, admonitory
finger upon my breast. He had a rudimentary
knowledge of English but it was very rudimentary,
and I remembered promptly that this was a French
railway.

" Parlez-vous Franfais?" said I, wondering if my
French would carry me through.

He shook his head. As a matter of fact English,

176 A WOMAN IN CHINA

pidgin- English, is the language of China, when
another tongue is wanted, and my new friend's
English was not at all bad — what there was of it.
Though why I should go to their country and expect
these people to understand me I'm sure I do not
know.

" Your luggage is here," said he very slowly,
emphasising every word by a tap.

" Thank Heaven," I sighed, " take me to it," but
he paid no heed.

' You " — and he tapped on solemnly — " must —
send — your — husband."

This was a puzzler. " My husband," I said
meekly, " is dead."

It looked like a deadlock. It was apparently
impossible to deliver up her luggage to a woman
whose husband was dead. Everybody on the plat-
form, including the idlers, made some suggestion to
relieve the strain, and feeling that it might help
matters, I said he had been dead a very long time,
I was a lonely orphan and I had no brothers. They
probably discussed the likelihood of my having any
other responsible male belongings and dismissed it,
and the man, who knew English, returned to the
charge.

"Where — do — you — stay?" and he tapped his
way through the sentence.

"At Dr Lewis's." I felt like doing it singsong
fashion myself.

" You — must — tell — Lu Tai Fu — to — come."

" But," I remonstrated, " Dr Lewis is busy, and
he does not know the luggage."

There was another long confabulation, then a
brilliant idea flashed like a meteor across the crowd.

THE TUNGLING 177

" You — must — go — back — and — write — a
— letter," and with a decisive tap my linguist friend
stood back, and the whole crowd looked at me as
much as to say that settled it most satisfactorily.

I argued the matter. I wanted to see the luggage.

" The — luggage — is — here " — tapped my friend,
reproachfully, as if regretting I should be so foolish
— " you — must — go — back — write — one — piecey —
letter."

"I'll write it here," said I, and after about a
quarter of an hour taken up in tapping, I was con-
ducted round to the back of the station, an elderly
inkpot and a very, very elderly pen with a point like
a very rusty pin were produced, but there was no
paper. Everyone looked about, under the benches,
up at the ceiling, and at last one really resourceful
person produced a luggage label of a violent yellow
hue, and on the back of that, with some difficulty,
for as well as the bad pen, there was a suspicion of
gum on the paper, I wrote a letter to " Dear Sir"
requesting that responsible individual to hand over
my luggage to my servant, I signed my name with
as big a flourish as the size of the label would allow,
and then I stood back and awaited developments.

Everybody in the room looked at that valuable
document. They tried it sideways, they tried it
upside down, but no light came. At last the
linguist remarked with his usual tap :

" No— can— read."

Well, I could read English, so with great
empressement and as if I were conferring a great
favour, I read that erudite document aloud to the
admiring crowd, even to my own name, and such
was the magic of the written word, that in about two

M

178 A WOMAN IN CHINA

minutes the lost luggage appeared, and was handed
over to my waiting coolie! Only when I was gone
doubt fell once more upon the company. Could a
woman, a masterless woman, be trusted? they ques-
tioned. And the stationmaster sent word to Lu
Tai Fu that he must have his card to show that it
was all right !

If a woman counted for so little in a town where
the foreigner was well Known, could I expect much
in out-of-the-way parts. I didn't expect much,
luckily. The people came and looked at me, and
they were invariably courteous and polite, with an
old-world courtesy that must have come down to
them through the ages, but they did not envy, I felt
it very strongly — at bottom they were contemptuous.
As I have seen the lower classes in an Australian
mining town, as I myself have looked upon a stranger
in an outlandish dress in the streets of London, so
these country people looked upon me. It was just
as well to make the most of a show, because their
lives were uneventful, that was all.

It began to get on my nerves before I had done,
this contemptuous curiosity. I don't know that I
was exactly afraid, but I grew to understand why
missionaries perish when the people have all appa-
rently been well-disposed. These people would not
have robbed me themselves, but had I met any of
the robbers I had been threatened with in Peking,
I am sure not one of them would have raised even
a finger to help me, they would not even have
protested. I was outside their lives.

And at last, at Malanyu, the hills that at first had
loomed purple on the horizon, fairly overshadowed
us, and I had arrived at the first stage of my

THE TUNGLING 179

journey, the Tungling, or Eastern Tombs. We did
forty miles that day over the roughest road I had
gone yet, and thankful was I when we rumbled
through the gates of the dirty, crowded, little town.

We put up at the smallest and filthiest inn I had
yet met. Chinese towns, even the smallest country
hamlet, are always suggestive of slums, and Malanyu
was worse than usual, but I slept the sleep of the
utterly weary, and next morning at sunrise I had
breakfast and went to see the tombs. I went in
state, in my own cart with an extra mule on in front,
I seated under the tilt a little back, and my servant
and the head " cartee man " on the shafts ; and then
I discovered that if a loaded cart is an abomination
before the Lord, a light cart is something unspeak-
able. But we had seen the wall that went round
the tombs the night before, just the other side of
the town, so I consoled myself with the reflection
that my sufferings would not be for long.

When the Imperial Manchus sought a last resting-
place for themselves they had the whole of China
to choose from, and they took with Oriental disregard
for humbler people ; but — saving grace — they chose
wisely though they chose cruelly. They have taken
for their own a place just where the mountains begin,
a place that must be miles in extent. It is of rich
alluvial soil swept down by the rains from the hills,
and all China, with her teeming population, cannot
afford to waste one inch of soil. The tiniest bit of
arable land, as I had been seeing for the last three
days, is put to some use, it is tilled and planted and
carefully tended, though it bear only a single fruit-
tree, only a handful of grain, but here we entered a
park, waste land covering many miles, wasted with

180 A WOMAN IN CHINA

a royal disregard for the people's needs. It lay in
a great bay of the hills, sterile, stony, rugged hills
with no trace of green upon them, hills that stand
up a perfect background to a most perfect place of
tombs. I had thought the resting-place of the
Mings wonderful, but surely there is no such place
for the honoured dead as that the Manchus have set
up at the Eastern Tombs.

Immediately we entered the gateway, the cart
jolting wickedly along a hardly defined track, I found
myself in a forest of firs and pines that grew denser
as we advanced. Here and there was a poplar or
other deciduous tree, green with the greenness of
Maytime, but the touch of lighter colour only empha-
sised the sombreness of the pines and firs that, with
their dark foliage, deepened the solemnity of the
scene. Through their branches peeped the deep
blue sky, and every now and again they opened out
a little, and beyond I could see the bare hills,
brown, and orange, and purple, but always beautiful,
with the shadows chasing each other over them, and
losing themselves in their folds. Spacious, grand,
silent, truly an ideal place for the burial of Emperors
and their consorts is hidden here in the heart of
mysterious, matter-of-fact China, and once again I
was shown, as I was being shown every day, another
side of China from the toiling thousands I saw in the
great city and on the country roads.

Dotted about in this great park, with long vistas
in between^ are the tombs. They are enclosed in
walls, walls of the pinkish red that encloses all
imperial grounds, generally there is a caretaker, and
they look for all the world like comfortable houses,
picturesque and artistic, nestling secluded and away

THE TUNGLING 181

from the rush and roar of cities, homes where a man
may take his well-earned rest. The filthy inn at
which I stayed, the reeking little town of Malanyu,
though it is at the very gates, is as far-removed from
all contact with the tombs as are the slums of Notting
Dale from the mansions in Park Lane, or the sordid,
mean streets of Paddington from the home of the
King in Buckingham Palace. The birds, the
innumerable, much-loved birds of China sang in the
trees their welcome to the glorious May morning,
and the only thing out of keeping was my groaning,
jolting, complaining Peking cart and the shouts of
the " cartee man " assuring the mules, so I have been
told, that the morals of their female relatives were
certainly not above suspicion.

Here and there, among the trees, rose up marble
pillars tall and stately, carved with dragons and
winged at the top, such as one sees in representa-
tions of Babylon and Nineveh, there was a marble
bridge, magnificent, with the grass growing up
between the great paving-stones that here, as every-
where in China, seem to mark the small value that
has been put on human flesh and blood, for by
human hands have they been placed here, and the
uprights are crowned by the symbolic cloud form,
caught in the marble. This bridge crosses no
stream. It is evidently just a manifestation of
power, the power that crushes, and beyond it is an
avenue of marble animals. There they stand on
the green sward, the green sward stolen from the
hungry, curving away towards the p'ia lou stand, as
they have stood for many a long year, horses,
elephants, fabulous beasts that might have come out
of the Book of Revelations, guarding the entrance

182 A WOMAN IN CHINA

to the place of rest. They are not nearly so magni-
ficent as the avenue at the Ming Tombs, they are
only quaintly Chinese, it is the winged pillars, the
silence, the sombre pine and fir-trees, and the ever-
lasting hills behind that give them dignity.

And now Tuan became very important. I began
to feel that he had arranged the whole for my benefit,
and was keeping the best piece back to crown it all.
We came to a piece of wild country and I was re-
quested to get out of the cart. Getting out of the
cart where there was no place to step was always a
business. I was stiff from the jolting, felt disin-
clined to be very acrobatic, and Tuan always felt it
his bounden duty to stretch out his arms to catch me,
or break my fall. He was so small, though he was
round and fat, that he always complicated matters
by making me feel that if I did fall I should certainly
materially damage him, but it was no good protest-
ing, it was the correct thing for him to help his
Missie out of her cart, and he was prepared to perish
in the attempt. However, here was a soft cushion
of fragrant pine needles, so I scrambled down with-
out any of the qualms from which I usually suffered.
We had come to a halt for a moment by the steep
side of a little wooded hill where a narrow footpath
wound round it. Just such a modest little path
between steep rising ground one might see in the
Surrey Hills. It invites to a secluded glen, but
no cart could possibly go along it, it is necessary to
walk. I turned the corner of the hill and lo! there
was a paved way, a newly paved way, such as I have
seldom seen in China. The faint morning breeze
stirred among the pine needles, making a low,
mysterious whispering, and out against the back-

1?

*fl

THE TUNGLING

ground stood, a splash of brilliant, glowing colour,
the many roofs of golden-brown tiles that cover the
mausoleum of the great woman who once ruled over
China, the last who made a stand, a futile stand,
against foreign aggression, and now a foreigner and
a woman, unarmed and alone, might come safely
and stand beside her tomb.

Perhaps that was the best way to view it, at any
rate inside I could not go, for the key I discovered
was at Malanyu, and it would have taken me at
least half a day to go back and get it. Besides I
don't think I wanted to go inside. I would not for
the world have spoilt the memory that remains in my
mind by any tawdry detail such as I had seen at the
younger Empress's funeral. It was just a little
spoilt as it was by my boy, who came along mysteri-
ously and pointed with a secret finger at the custodian
of the tomb, who had not the keys.

" Suppose Missie makee littee cumshaw. Sup-
pose my payee one dollar."

And I expect the man did get perhaps sixty cents,
because Tuan was bent on impressing on these
people the fact that his Missie was a very important
woman indeed.

It was worth it^ it was well worth it.

They say that the old in China "is passing away.
" Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that
bringeth good tidings." Will they sweep away
these tombs and give this land to the people? I
hope not, I think not, I pray not. The present in
China is inextricably mixed up with the past. " Oh
Judah keep thy solemn feast, perform thy vows."
Sometimes it is surely well that the beautiful should
be kept for a nation, even at great cost.

CHAPTER XI

A WALLED CITY

Numerous walled towns — The dirt of them— T'ung Chou—
Romance of the evening light — My own little walled city —
The gateways— Hospitable landlady — Bald heads— My land-
lady's room — A return present—" The ringleaders have been
executed " — Summary justice — To the rescue of the
missionaries at Hsi An Fu — The Elder Brother Society-
Primitive method of attack and defence — The sack of I
Chun.

OH that first walled city! It was the first of many
walled cities, many of them so small that it did not
take us more than a quarter of an hour to cross from
gate to gate ; but to enter one and all was like open-
ing a door into the past, into the life our forbears
lived before the country I was born and brought up
in was ever thought of. When I was a little girl,
I cherished a desire to marry a German baron, a
German baron of the Middle Ages, who lived in a
castle, and 1 could not help thinking, as the influenza
left me and I regained my powers of thought, that
here were the towns of my German baron's time —
dirt and all. In my childhood I had never thought
of the dirt, or perhaps I had not minded. One
thing is certain, in the clean land of my childhood
I never realised what the dirt that comes from a
packed population, from seething humanity, can be
like. The Chinese live in these crowded towns for

184

A WALLED CITY 185

the sake of security — of security in this twentieth
century — for even still, China seems to be much
in the condition of Europe of the Middle Ages,
safety cannot be absolutely counted upon inside the
gates of a town, but at least it is a little safer than
the open country.

We passed through Tung Chou when the soft
tender evening shadows were falling upon battle-
ments and walls built by a nation that, though
it is most practical, is also one of the most poetical
on earth; we passed through Chi Chou when the
shadows were long in the early morning, and in
the sunlight was the hope of the new-born day.
Through the gate was coming a train of Peking
carts, of laden donkeys, of great grain carts with
seven mules, all bound for the capital in the south.

I remember these two perhaps because they were
the first of many walled towns, but Tsung Hua Chou
will always remain in my memory as my own little
walled city, the one that I explored carefully all by
myself, and, when I think of a walled town, my
thoughts always fly back to that little town, three-
quarters of a mile square, at the foot of the hills that
mark the limit of the great plain of China proper.

It was Tuan's suggestion we should stay there.
I would have lingered at the tombs, but he was
emphatic.

" Missie want make picture. More better we
stop Tsung Hua Chou. Fine picture Tsung Hua
Chou."

There weren't fine pictures at Tsung Hua Chou.
He had struck up a great friendship with the
"cartee man," and, perhaps, either he or the " cartee
man " had a favourite gaming-house, or a favourite

186 A WOMAN IN CHINA

singing girl in the town. At any rate we went, and
I, for some hardly explainable reason, am glad we
did.

The road from the tombs was simply appalling.
The hills frowned down on us, close on either side,
high and steep and rugged, but the rough valley
bottom, up which we went, was the wildest I was to
see for a long time. To say I was tossed and jolted,
is to but mildly express the condition of affairs. I
sat on a cushion, I packed my bedding round me,
and with both my hands I held on to the side of
the cart, and if for one moment I relaxed the
rigidity of my aching arms, my head or some other
portion of my aching anatomy, was brought into
contact with the woodwork of the cart, just in the
place I had reckoned the woodwork could not
possibly have reached me. There were little
streams and bridges across them, which I particu-
larly dreaded, for the bridges were always roughly
paved, but it was nobody's business to see that the
road and the pavement met neatly, and the jolt the
cart gave, both getting on and getting off, nearly
shook the soul out of my body. I thought of
walking, for our progress was very slow, but in
addition to the going being bad, the mules went just
a little faster than I did, three and a half miles an
hour to my three, and I felt there was nothing for
it but to resign myself and make the best of a bad
job. Not for worlds would I have lingered an
hour longer on that road than I was absolutely
obliged. And yet, bad as it was, it was the best
road I had till I got back to Peking again. There
may be worse roads than those of China, and there
may be worse ways of getting over them than in a

A WALLED CITY 187

Peking cart, but I do trust I never come across
them.

We entered the gates of the city as the evening
shadows were growing long, and as usual, I was
carried back to the days of the Crusaders — or farther
still to Babylon — as we rumbled under the arched
gateway, but inside it was like every other town
I have seen, dirty, sordid, crowded, with uneven
pavements that there was no getting away from.
Within the curtain wall, that guarded the gate, there
were the usual little stalls for the sale of cakes, big,
round, flat cakes and little scone-like cakes, studded
with sesame seed, or a bright pink sweetmeat ; there
were the sellers of pottery ware, basins and pots
of all sorts, and the people stared at the foreign
woman, the wealthy foreign woman who ran to two
carts. It is an unheard-of thing in China for a
Chinese woman to travel alone, though sometimes
the foreign missionary women do, but they would
invariably be accompanied by a Chinese woman,
and one woman would not be likely to have two
carts. One thing was certain however, my outfit
was all that it should have been, bar the lack of a
male protector. It bespoke me a woman of wealth
and position in the eyes of the country folk, and the
people of the little towns through which I passed.
It is possible that a mule litter might have enhanced
my dignity; but after all, two Peking carts was
very much like having a first-class compartment all
to myself.

There were no foreigners, that I could hear of,
in Tsung Hua Chou. The missionaries had fled
during the Boxer trouble, and never come back,
so that I was more of a show than usual, though

188 A WOMAN IN CHINA

indeed, in all the towns I passed through I was a
show, and the people stared, and chattered, and
crowded round the carts, and evidently closely
questioned the carters.

They tell me Chinese carters are often rascals,
but I grew to like mine very much before we parted
company.

They were stolid men in blue, with dirty rags
wrapped round their heads to keep off the dust, and
I have no reason to suppose that they affected water
any more than the rest of the population, whereby
I perceive, my affections are not so much guided by
a desire for cleanliness as I had once supposed.
They both had the hands of artists, artists with very
dirty nails, so it may be a feeling of brotherhood
had something to do with my feelings, for I am
hoping you who read will count me an artist in a
small way. What romance they wove about me,
for the benefit of the questioning people, I don't
know, but the result of their communications was
that the crowd pressed closer, and stared harder,
and they were evil-smelling, and had never, never
in all their lives been washed. I ceased to wonder
that I ached all over with the jolting and rumbling
of the cart:, I only wondered if something worse had
not befallen me, and how it happened that these
people, who crowded round, staring as if never in
their lives had they seen a foreign woman before,
did not fall victims to some horrible pestilence.

For once inside Tsung Hua Chou I saw no
beauty in it, for all the romantic walls outside.
The evil-smelling streets we rumbled through to the
inn were wickedly narrow, and down the centre hung
notices in Chinese characters on long strips of

OUTSIDE A WALLED CITY.

GATE OF A WALLED CITY.

A WALLED CITY 189

paper white and red, and pigs, and children, and
creaking wheelbarrows, and men with loads, blocked
the way. But we jolted over the step into the
courtyard of the inn at last, quite a big courtyard,
and quite a busy inn. This was an inn where they
apparently ran a restaurant, for as I climbed stiffly
out of my cart a servant, carrying a tray of little
basins containing the soups and stews the Chinese
eat, was so absorbed in gazing at me he ran into
the " cartee man," and a catastrophe occurred which
was the occasion of much bad language.

The courtyard was crowded. There were blue-
tilted Peking carts, there were mules, there were
donkeys, there were men of all sorts ; but there was
only one wretched little room for me. It was very
dirty too, and I was very tired. What was to be
done?

" Plenty Chinese gentlemen sleep here," declared
Tuan, and I could quite believe it. At the door of
every lattice-windowed room that looked out on to
that busy courtyard, stood one, or perhaps two
Chinese of the better class — long petticoats, shaven
head, queue and all — each held in his hand a long,
silver-mounted pipe from which he took languid
whiffs, and he looked under his eyelids, which is
the polite way, at the foreign woman. The foreign
woman was very dirty, very tired, and very uncom-
fortable, and the room looked very hopeless. The
" cartee men " declared that this was the best inn in
the town, and anyhow I was disinclined to go out
and look for other quarters. Then there came
tottering forward an old woman with tiny feet, one
eye and a yellow flower stuck in the knot at the
back of her bald head. China is the country of bald

190 A WOMAN IN CHINA

women. The men, I presume, would not mind it
very much, as for so long they have shaven off at
least half their hair, but the women certainly must,
for if they can they dress their dark hair very
elaborately. And yet have I seen many women,
like this innkeeper's wife, with a head so bald that
but a few strands of hair cover its nakedness, yet
those few poor hairs are gathered together into an
arrangement of black silk shaped something like a
horn, and beside it is placed a flower, a rose, a pink
oleander blossom, or a bright yellow flower for
which I have no name. That flower gives a finish
to a sleek and well-dressed head, when the owner
has plenty of hair, but when she has only the heavy
horn of silk, half a dozen hairs, and the rest of her
bald pate covered with a black varnish, it is a poor
travesty. When a girl marries, immediately after
her husband has lifted her veil and she is left to the
women of his family they pluck out the front hairs
on her forehead, so as to give a square effect, and
the hair is drawn very tightly back and gathered
generally into this horn. I suspect this heavy horn
is responsible for the baldness, though an American
of my acquaintance declares it is the plucking out of
the hairs on the forehead. " The rest of the hair,"
says he, " kinder gets discouraged."

This innkeeper's wife was very kindly. She said
I should not sleep in that room, I should have her
room, and she would go to her mother's. The
mother was a surprise to me. I hope when I am as
old as she looked I shall have a mother to go to.

Now I do not as a rule embrace my landlady.
In England I couldn't even imagine myself feeling
particularly kindly towards a dirty little woman clad

A WALLED CITY 191

in a shirt and trousers of exceedingly dirty blue
cotton, but the intention was so evidently kind and
hospitable, I knew not a word of her tongue, and
was by no means sure the valued Tuan would
translate my words of thanks properly, so I could
but take both her very dirty little hands in mine,
clasp them warmly, and try and look my thanks.
Then I inspected her room. It was approached
through an entrance where lime was stored, it was
rather dark, and it was of good size, though on one
side was stacked a supply of stores for the restaurant.
Chinese macaroni, that looks as if it were first cousin
to sheet gelatine, stale eggs and other nondescript
eatables. There was a k'ang, of course, quite a family
k'ang, and there was a large mirror on one wall. I
had forgotten my camp mirror, so I looked in it
eagerly, and the reflection left me chastened. I
hadn't expected the journey to improve my looks,
but I did hope it had not swelled up one cheek, and
bunged up the other eye. I felt I did not want to
stay in the room with that mirror, but there were
other things worse than the mirror in it. The
beautiful lattice-work window had apparently never
been opened since the first cover of white tissue
paper had been put on it, and the smell of human
occupancy there defies my poor powers of descrip-
tion. The dirty little place I had at first disdained,
had at least a door opening on to the comparatively
fresh air of the courtyard. I told Tuan to explain
that while I was delighted to see her room, and
admired everything very much in it, nothing would
induce me to deprive her of its comforts. She
certainly was friendly. As I looked in the chasten-
ing mirror, I, like a true woman, I suppose, put up

192 A WOMAN IN CHINA

a few stray locks that the jolting cart had shaken
out of place, and she promptly wanted to do my
hair herself with a selection from an array of
elderly combs with which she probably dressed her
own scanty locks. That was too much. I had to
decline, I trust she thought it was my modesty, and
then she offered me some of the macaroni. I tried
to say I had nothing to give in return and then Tuan
remarked, "As friend, as friend." So as a friend,
from that little maimed one-eyed old woman up in
the hills of China, I took a handful of macaroni and
had nothing to give in return. I hope she feels as
friendly towards me as I shall always do towards
her.

It is not always that the difficulty of giving a
return present is on the foreign side, sometimes it
is the Chinese who feel it. I remember a traveller
for a business house telling me how on one occasion
he had gone to a village and entertained the elders at
dinner, giving them brandy which they loved, and
liqueurs which seemed to the unsophisticated village
fathers ambrosia fit for the gods. The next day,
when he was about to take his departure, a small
procession approached him and one of them bore
on a tray a little Chinese handleless cup covered
with another. They said he could speak Chinese,
so there was no need for an interpreter, that he had
given them a very good time, they were very grate-
ful, and they wished to make him a present by
which he might remember them sometimes. But
their village was poor and small. It contained
nothing worth his acceptance, and after much con-
sultation, they had come to the conclusion that the
best way would be to present him with the money,

A WALLED CITY 193

so that he might buy something for himself when
he came to Peking or some other large town.
Thereupon the cup was presented, the cover lifted
off, and in the bottom lay a ten cent piece, worth
about twopence halfpenny. Probably it seemed
quite an adequate present to men who count their
incomes by cash of which a thousand go to the
dollar.

I don't think my landlady minded much my
declining the hospitality of her room. Possibly she
only wished me to see its glories, and presently she
brought to the little room I had at first so despised,
and now looked upon, if not as a haven of rest, at
least as one of fresh air, a couple of nice hard wood
stools, and a beautifully carved k'ang table thick with
grease.

" Say must make Missie comfortable," said Tuan
with the usual suggestion he had done it himself.

And those stools were covered, much to my
surprise, with red woollen tapestry, and the pattern
was one that I had seen used many a time in a little
town on the Staffordshire moors, where their busi-
ness is to dye and print. And here was one of the
results of their labours, a "Wardle rag," as we used
to call them, up among the hills of Northern China.

I was too tired to do anything but go to bed that
night as soon as I had had my dinner. I had it, as
usual, on the k'ang table, the dirt shrouded by my
humble tablecloth, and curious eyes watched me,
even as I watched the trays of full basins and the
trays of empty ones that were for ever coming
and going across the courtyard.

Next morning my friendly landlady brought to
see me two other small-footed women, both smoking

N

194 A WOMAN IN CHINA

long pipes, women who said, through Tuan, their
ages were forty and sixty respectively, and who
examined, with interest, me and my belongings.
They felt my boots so much, good, substantial,
leather-built by Peter Yapp, that at last I judged
they would like to see what was underneath, and
took off a boot and stocking for their inspection, and
the way they felt my foot up and down as if it were
something they had never before met in their lives,
amused me very much. At least at first it amused
me, and then it saddened me. Though they held
out their own poor maimed feet, they did not return
the compliment much as I desired it. They took
me across the courtyard into another room where,
behind lattice-work windows, that had not been
opened for ages, were two more women sitting on
the k'ang, and two little shaven-headed children.
These were younger women, tall and stout, with feet
so tiny, they called my attention to them, that it did
not seem to me possible any woman could support
herself upon them. My boy was not allowed in, so
of course I could not talk to them, could only smile
and drink tea.

These two younger women, who were evidently
of superior rank, had their hair most elaborately
dressed and wore most gorgeous raiment. One was
clad in purple satin with a little black about it, and
the other, a mere girl of eighteen, but married, for
her hair was no longer in a queue, and her forehead
was squared, wore a coat of pale blue silk brocade
and grass-green trousers of the same material.
Their faces were impassive, as are the faces of
Chinese women of the better class, but they smiled,
evidently liked their tortured feet to be noticed, gave

A WALLED CITY 195

me tea from the teapot on the k'ang table, and then
presently all four, with the gaily dressed babies,
tottered out into the courtyard, the older women
leading the toddling children, and helping the
younger, and, with the aid of settles, they climbed
into two Peking carts, my elderly friends taking
their places on the outside, whereby I judged they
were servants or household slaves.

"Chinese wives," said Tuan, but whether they
were the wives of one man, or of two, I had no
means of knowing. The costumes of the two
younger were certainly not those in which I would
choose to travel on a Chinese road in a Peking cart,
but the Chinese have a proverb : " Abroad wear the
new, at home it does not matter," so they probably
thought my humble mole-coloured cotton crepe,
equally out of place.

And when they were gone I set out to explore the
town.

It was only a small place, built square, with two
main roads running north, and south, and east, and
west, and cutting each other at right angles in the
heart of it. They were abominably paved. No
vehicle but a springless Peking cart would have
dreamt of making its way across that pavement, but
then probably no vehicle save a cart or a wheel-
barrow in all the years of the city's life had ever
been thought of there. The remaining streets were
but evil-smelling alley-ways, narrow in comparison
with the main ways which, anywhere else, I should
have deemed hopelessly inadequate, thronged as
they were with people and encroached upon by the
shops that stood close on either side. They had no
glass fronts, of course, these shops, but otherwise,

196 A WOMAN IN CHINA

they were not so very unlike the shops one sees in
the poorer quarters of the great towns in England.
But there was evidently no Town Council to regu-
late the use to which the streets should be put. The
dyer hung his long strips of blue cloth half across
the roadway, careless of the convenience of the
passer-by, the man who sold cloth had out little
tables or benches piled with white and blue calico —
I have seen tradesmen do the same in King's Road,
Chelsea — the butcher had his very disagreeable
wares fully displayed half across the roadway, the
gentleman who was making mud bricks for the
repair of his house, made them where it was handiest
in the street close to the house, and the man who
sold cooked provisions, with his little portable
kitchen and table, set himself down right in the
fairway and tempted all-comers with little basins of
soup, fat, pale-looking steamed scones, hard-boiled
eggs or meat turnovers.

This place, hidden behind romantic grey walls,
at which I had wondered in the evening light, was
in the morning just like any other city, Peking
with the glory and beauty gone out of it, and the
people who thronged those streets were just the
poorer classes of Peking, only it seemed there were
more naked children and more small-footed women
with elaborately dressed hair tottering along,
balancing themselves with their arms. I met a
crowd accompanying the gay scarlet poles, flags,
musical instruments and the red sedan chair of a
wedding. The poor little bride, shut up in the
scarlet chair, was going to her husband's house and
leaving her father's for ever. It is to be hoped she
would find favour in the sight of her husband and

DEAD GODS AT TSUNG HUA CHOU.

TEMPLE COURTYARD AT TSUNG HUA CHOU.

A WALLED CITY 197

her husband's women-folk. It was more important
probably, that she should please the latter.

The bridal party made a great noise, but then all in
that town was noise, dirt, crowding, and evil smells.
The only peaceful place in it was the courtyard of
the little temple close against the city wall. Out-
side it stand two hideous figures with hands flung out
in threatening attitude, and inside were more figures,
all painted in the gayest colours. What they meant
I have not lore enough to know, but they were very
hideous, the very lowest form of art.

There was the recording angel with a black face
and the open book — after all, the recording angel
must often wear a black face — and there was the
eternal symbol that has appealed through all ages
to all people, and must appeal one would think
above all, to this nation that longs so ardently for
offspring, the mother with the child upon her knee.
But they were all ugly to my Western eyes, and the
only thing that charmed me was the silence, the
cleanliness, and the quiet of the courtyard, the
only place in all the busy little city that was at
peace.

When I engaged Tuan I had thought he was to
do all the waiting upon me I needed, but it seems I
made a mistake. The farther I got from Peking
the greater his importance became, and here he
could not so much as carry for me the lightest wrap.
His business appeared to be to engage other people
to do the work. There was one dilapidated wretch
to carry the camera, another the box with the plates,
and yet a third bore the black cloth I would put over
my head to focus my pictures properly. It was not
a bit of good protesting, two minutes after I got rid

198 A WOMAN IN CHINA

of one lot of followers, another took their place, and
as everyone had to be paid, apparently, I often
thought, for the pleasure of looking at me, I
resigned myself to my fate.

Accompanied by all the idlers and children in
the town I climbed the ramp on to the walls, which
are in perfect order, three miles round and on the
top from fifteen feet to twenty broad. That ramp
must have been always steep, the last thing a
Chinese ever thinks about is comfort, steep almost
as the walls themselves, and everywhere the stones
are gone, making it a work of difficulty to climb to
the top. Tuan helped me in approved Chinese
fashion, putting his hand underneath my elbow, and
once I was there the town was metamorphosed, it
was again the romantic city I had seen from the
plain in the evening light. Now the early morning
sunlight, with all the promise of the day in it, fell
upon graceful curved Chinese roofs and innumer-
able trees, dainty with the delicate vivid verdure
that comes in the spring as a reward to a country
where the winter has been long, bitter, and iron-
bound.

The walls of most Chinese cities are built square,
with right angles at the four corners, but in at least
two that I have been in, T'ung Chou and Pao Ting
Fu, one corner is built out in a bow. I rather
admired the effect at first, till I found it was a mark
of deepest disgrace. There had been a parricide
committed in the town. When such a terrible thing
occurs a corner of the city wall must be pulled down
and built out ; a second one, another corner is
pulled down and built out, and a third likewise ; but
the fourth time such a crime is committed in the

A WALLED CITY 199

luckless town the walls must be razed to the ground.
But such a disgrace has never occurred in any town
in the annals of Chinese history, those age-long
annals that go back farther than any other nation's,
for if a town should be so unlucky as to have
harboured four such criminals within its walls they
generally managed, by the payment of a sum of
money, to get a city that had some of its corners
still intact to take the disgrace upon itself.

I strongly suspect too, that it is only when the
offender is in high places that his crime is thus
commemorated, for I have only heard of these two
cases, and yet as short a while ago as 1912 there
was a terrible murder in Pao Ting Fu that shocked
the town. It appeared there was an idle son, who
instead of working for his family, spent all his time
attending to his cage bird, taking it out for walks,
encouraging it to sing, hunting the graves outside
the town for insects for it. His poor old mother
sighed over his uselessness.

" If it were not for the bird ! " said she.

The young blood in China, it seems, goes to the
dogs over a cage bird, a lark or a thrush, as the
young man in modern Europe comes to grief over
horse-racing, so we see that human nature is the
same all the world over. This Chinese mother
brooded over her boy's wasted life, and one day when
he was out she opened the cage door and the bird
flew away.

When he came in he asked for the bird and she
said nothing, only with her large, sharp knife went
on shredding up the vegetables that she was putting
into a large cauldron of boiling water for supper.
He asked again for the bird. Still she took no

200 A WOMAN IN CHINA

notice, and he seized her knife and slit her up into
small pieces and put her into the cauldron. He
was taken, and tried, and was put to death by slicing
into a thousand pieces — yes, even in modern China
— but they did not think it necessary to pull down
another corner of the city wall. Possibly they felt
the disgrace of a bygone age was enough for Pao
Ting Fu.

The corners of the walls of Tsung Hua Chou
were as they were first built, rectangular, and the
watch-towers at those corners and over the four
gates from the distance looked imposing, all that
they should be, but close at hand I saw that they
were tumbling into ruins, the doors were fallen off
the hinges, the window-frames were broken, all was
desolate and empty.

" Once the soldier she watch here," said my boy,
whose pronouns were always somewhat mixed

"Why not now? "

" No soldier here now. She go work in gold
mine ninety li away. Gold mine belong Plesident."

Tuan had got as far as the fact that a President
had taken the place of the Manchu Emperor, but I
wondered very much whether the inhabitants of
Tsung Hua Chou had. I meditated on my way
back to a Missie's inn " on the limitations of the
practical Chinese mind that because it is practical,
I suppose, cannot conceive of the liberty, equality,
and fraternity that a Republic denotes. The Presi-
dent, to the humble Chinese in the street, has just
taken the place of the Emperor, he is the one who
rules over them, his soldiers are withdrawn. That
there was a war in Mongolia, a rebellion impending
in the south, were items of news that had not reached

NORTH-WEST CORNER OF WALL, PAO TING FU.

A COOLIE IN THE STREET, TSUNG HUA CHOU.

A WALLED CITY 201

the man in the street in Tsung Hua Chou who, feeling
that the soldiers must be put to some use, concluded
they were working in the President's gold mine
ninety li away.

A foreigner went to a Chinese tailor the other day
to make him a suit of clothes, and he found occasion
to complain that the gentleman's prices had gone
up considerably since he employed him last. The
man of the scissors was equal to the occasion, and
explained that, since " revelations," so many Chinese
had taken to wearing foreign dress, he was obliged
to charge more.

" You belong revolution ? " asked the inquiring
foreigner, anxious to find out how far liberty,
fraternity, and equality had penetrated.

The tailor looked at him more in sorrow than in
scorn. How could he be so foolish.

" I no belong revelation," he explained carefully,
as one who was instructing where no instruction
should have been necessary. The thing was self-
evident, " I belong tailor man."

When the revolution first dawned upon the
country people all they realised — when they realised
anything at all — was that there was no longer an
Emperor, therefore they supposed they would no
longer have to pay taxes. When they found that
Emperor or no Emperor taxes were still required
of them, they just put the President in the Emperor's
place. I strongly suspect that if the greater part
of the inhabitants of my walled city were to be
questioned as to the revolution they would reply like
the tailor : " No belong revolution, belong Tsung
Hua Chou!"

But in truth the civilisation of China is still sq

202 A WOMAN IN CHINA

much like that of Babylon and Nineveh, that it is
best for the poor man, if he can, to efface himself.
He does not pray for rights as yet. He only prays
that he may slip through life unnoticed, that he may
not come in contact with the powers that rule him,
for no matter who is right or who is wrong bitter
experience has taught him that he will suffer.

We do not realise that sufficiently in the West
when we talk of China. We judge her by our own
standards. The time may come when this may be
a right way of judging, but it has not come yet.
Rather should we judge as they judged in the days
of the old Testament, in the days of Nineveh and
Babylon, when the proletariat, the slaves, were as
naught in the sight of God or man.

A man told me how in the summer of 1912,
travelling in the interior, he came to a small city in
one of the central provinces, a city not unlike Tsung
Hua Chou, like indeed a thousand other little cities
in this realm of Cathay. The soldiers quartered
there had not been paid, and they had turned to and
looted the town. The unwise city men, instead of
submitting lest a worse thing happen unto them, had
telegraphed their woes to Peking, and orders had
come down to the General in command that the ring-
leaders must be executed. But no wise General is
going to be hard on his own soldiers. This General
certainly was not. Still justice had to be satisfied,
and he was not at a loss. He sent a body of
soldiers to the looted shops, where certain luckless
men were sadly turning over the damaged property.
These they promptly arrested. The English on-
looker, who spoke Chinese, declared to me solemnly
these arrested men were the merchants themselves,

A WALLED CITY 203

their helpers and coolies. That was nothing to the
savage soldiery. There had to be victims. Had
not the order come from the central government.
Some of the men, there were twenty in all, they beat
and left dead on the spot, the rest they dragged to
the yamen. The traveller, furious and helpless,
followed. Of course the guilt of the merchants was
a foregone conclusion. They never execute anyone
who does not confess his guilt and the justice of his
sentence in China, but they have means of making
sure of the confession. Presently out the unfor-
tunate men came again, stripped to the waist, with
their arms tied up high behind them, prepared, in
fact, for death. The soldiers dragged them along,
they protesting their innocence to unheeding ears.
Their women and children came out, running
alongside the mournful procession, clinging to the
soldiers and to their husbands and fathers, and
praying for mercy. They tripped and fell, and the
soldiers, the soldiers in khaki, pushed them aside,
and stepped over them, and dragged on their
victims. The traveller followed. No one took
any notice of him, and what could he do, though his
heart was sore, one against so many. Through
the narrow, filthy streets they went, past their own
looted shops. They looked about them wildly, but
there was none to help, and before them marched
the executioner, with a great sharp sword in his
hands, and always the soldiers in modern uniform
emphasised the barbarity of the crime. Presently
they had distanced the wailing women and were
outside the walls, but the foreign onlooker was still
with them.

" And one was a boy not twenty," he said with

204 A WOMAN IN CHINA

a sharp, indrawn breath, wiping his face as he told
the ghastly tale.

They knelt in a row, just where the walls of
their own town frowned down on them, and one by
one the executioner cut off their heads. The death
of the first in the line was swift enough, but, as he
approached the end of the row the man's arm grew
tired and he did not get the last two heads right off.

" I saw one jump four times," said the shocked
onlooker, " before he died."

And then they telegraphed to Peking that order
had been restored, and the ringleaders executed.

Since I heard that man's story, I always read that
order has been restored in any Chinese city with a
shudder, and wonder how many innocents have
suffered. For I have heard stories like that, not of
one city, or told by one man, but of various cities,
and told by different men. The Chinese, it seems
to me, copy very faithfully the European news-
papers, the great papers of the Western world.
Horrors like that are never read in a Western paper,
therefore you never see such things reported in the
Chinese papers. After all they are only the prole-
tariat, the slaves of Babylon or Nineveh. Who
counted a score or so of them slain? Order has
been restored, comes the message for the benefit of
the modern world, and in the little city the bloody
heads adorn the walls and the bodies lie outside to
be torn to pieces by the wonks and the vultures.

And when I heard tales like this, I wondered
whether it was safe for a woman to be travelling
alone. It is safe, of course, for the Chinaman,
strange as it may sound after telling such tales,
is at bottom more law-abiding than the average

A WALLED CITY 205

European. True, he is more likely to insult or rob
a woman than a man, because he has for so long1
regarded a woman as of so much less consequence
than a man, that when he considers the matter he
cannot really believe that any nation could hold a
different opinion. Still, in all probability, she will
be safe, just as in all probability she might march
by herself from Land's End to John o' Groats
without being molested. She may be robbed and
murdered, and so she may be robbed and murdered
in China. The Chinese are robbed and murdered
often enough themselves poor things. Also they
do not surfer in silence. They revenge themselves
when they can.

A man travelling for the British and American
Tobacco Company, he was a young man, not yet
eight-and-twenty, told me how, once, outside a
small walled town, Ke came upon a howling mob,
and parting them after the lordly fashion of the
Englishman, who knows he can use his hands, he
saw they were crowding round a pit half filled with
quicklime. In it, buried to his middle, was a
ghastly creature with his eyes scooped out, and the
hollows filled up with quicklime.

" If I had had a pistol handy," said the teller of
the tale, " I would have shot him. I couldn't have
helped myself. It seemed the only thing to put him
out of his misery, but, after all, I think he was past
all feeling, and I wonder what the people would
have done to me ! "

They told him, when he investigated, that this
man was a robber, that he had robbed and murdered
without mercy, and so, when he fell into their
hands, they had taken vengeance.

206 A WOMAN IN CHINA

Was that Babylon, or Nineveh, I wondered?
Since such things happen in China one feels that
the age of Babylon and Nineveh has not yet gone
by. Talk with but a few men who have wandered
into the interior, and you realise the strong necessity
for these walled towns.

When the rumour of the slaughter of the
Manchus, and the killing in the confusion of eight
Europeans at Hsi An Fu in Shensi in October
1911, reached Peking, nine young men banded
themselves together into the Shensi Relief Force,
and set out from the capital to relieve the mission-
aries cut off there. One of these young men it was
my good fortune to meet, and the story of their
doings, told at first hand, unrolled for me the leaves
of history. They set out to help the men and
women of their own colour, but as they passed west
from Tai Yuan Fu, again and again, the people of
the country appealed to them to stop and help them.
The Elder Brother Society, the Ko Lao Hui were
on the warpath, and, with whatever good intentions
this society had originated, it was, on this way from
Tai Yuan Fu to Hsi An Fu, nothing less than a band
of robbers, pillaging and murdering, and even the
walled cities were hardly a safeguard. Village after
village, with no such defences, was wrecked, burned,
and destroyed, and their inhabitants were either slain
or refugees in the mountains. And the suffering
that means, with the bitter winter of China ahead of
them, is ghastly to think of. They died, of course,
and those who were slain by the robbers probably
suffered the least.

"What could we do? What could we possibly
do?" asked my informant pitifully.

A WALLED CITY 207

At last they came to Sui Te Chou, a walled city,
and Sui Te Chou was for the moment triumphant.
It had driven off the robbers. The Elder Brother
Society had held the little city closely invested.
They had built stone towers, and, from the top of
them, had fired into the city, and at the defenders
on the walls, and, under cover of this fire from the
towers, they had attempted to scale the battlements.
But the people on the walls had pushed them down
with long spears, and had poured boiling water
upon them, and, finally, the robbers had given way,
and some braves, issuing from the south gate had
fallen upon them, killing many and capturing thirty
of them. It was a short shrift for them, and a
festoon of heads adorned the gateway under which
the foreigners passed.

But, though victorious, the braves of Sui Te Chou
knew right well that the lull was only momentary.
They were reversing tEe Scriptural order of things,
and beating their ploughshares into swords. The
brigands would be back as soon as they had rein-
forcements, the battle would be to the strong and it
would indeed be " Woe to the Vanquished ! "

"We could not help them. We could not,"
reiterated the teller of the tale sadly ; " we just had
to go on."

It was old China, he said, let us hope the last of
old China. In that town were English missionaries,
a man and his wife, another man and two little
children, members of the English Baptist Church,
dressed in Chinese dress, the men with queues.
These they rescued, and took along with them, and
glad were they to have two more able-bodied men
in the party, even though they were counterbalanced

208 A WOMAN IN CHINA

by the presence of the woman and two children, fof
everywhere along the track were evidences of the
barbaric times in which they lived. Human heads
in wicker cages were common objects of the way-
side, and the wolves came down from the mountains
and gnawed at the dead bodies, or attacked the sick
and wounded. Old China was a ghastly place that
autumn of 1911, during the "bloodless" revolution.
Chung Pu they reached immediately after it had
been attacked by six hundred men.

"I had to kick a dog away that was gnawing at
a dead body as we led the lady into a house for
the night," said the narrator. " I could only implore
her not to look."

But at I Chun things were worse still. They
reached it just as it had fallen into the hands of the
Elder Brother Society, and they began to think they
had taken those missionaries out of the frying-pan
into the fire. I Chiin is a walled city up in the
mountains of Shensi, and the only approach was by
a pathway so narrow that it only allowed of one mule
litter at a time. On one side was a steep precipice,
on the other the city wall, and along that wall came
racing men armed with matchlocks, spears, and
swords, yelling defiance and prepared, apparently,
to attack. The worst of it was there was no turning
that litter round. They halted, and the gate ahead
of them opened, and right in the centre of the gate-
way was an ancient cannon with a man standing
beside it with a lighted rope in his hand. Turn the
litter and get away in a hurry they could not.
Leave it they could not. There was seemingly no
escape for them. It only wanted one of those
excited men to shout "Ta, Ta," and the match

A WALLED CITY 209

would have been applied, and the ancient gun would
have swept the pathway. Then the leader of the
band of foreigners stepped forward. He flung away
his rifle, he flung away his revolver, he flung away
his knife, and he stood there before them defence-
less, with his arms raised — modern civilisation
bowing for the moment before the force of Babylon.
It was a moment of supreme anxiety. Suppose
the people misunderstood his actions.

"We scarcely dared breathe," said the story-
teller. Every heart stood still. And then they
understood. The man with the lighted rope
dropped it, and they beckoned to the strangers to
come inside the gates.

It required a good deal of courage to go inside
those gates, to put themselves in the power of the
Elder Brother Society, and they spent an anxious
night. The town had been sacked, the streets ran
blood, the men were slain, their bodies were in the
streets for the crows and the wonks to feed on, and
the women — well women never count for much in
China in times of peace, and in war they are the
spoil of the victor — the Goddess of Mercy was
forgotten those days in I Chiin. All night long the
anxious little party kept watch and ward, and when
day dawned were thankful to be allowed to proceed
on their way unmolested, eventually reaching Hsi
An Fu and rescuing all the missionaries who wished
to be rescued.

" It was exciting," said my friend, half apologising
for getting excited over it. " It was the last of old
China. Such things will never happen again."

Exciting! it thrilled me to hear him talk, to know
such things had happened barely a year before, to

o

210 A WOMAN IN CHINA

know they had happened in this country. Would
they never happen again ? I was not so sure of that
as I went through walled town after walled town,
as I looked up at the walls of Tsung Hua Chou.
This was the correct setting. To talk in friendly,
commonplace fashion to people who lived in such
towns seemed to annihilate time, to bring the past
nearer to me, to make me understand, as I had
never understood before, that the people who had
lived, and suffered, and triumphed, or lived, and
suffered, and fallen, were almost exactly the same
flesh and blood as I was myself.

Back at the inn my friend the landlady brought
me her little grandson to admire. He was a jolly
little unwashed chap with a shaven head, clad in an
unwashed shift, and I think I admired him to her
heart's content. It was evidently worth having been
born and lived all the strenuous weary days of her
hard life to have had part in the bringing into the
world of that grandson. His little sister in the blue-
cornered handkerchief, looking on, did not count
for much, and yet she had her own feelings, for
when I clambered into my cart and was just
rumbling over the step I was startled by a terrified
childish outcry. Looking back, I saw that a little
serving-maid, a slave probably, was running after
my cart with the small son and heir in her arms,
making believe to give away the household treasure
to the foreign woman, with grandmother and subor-
dinates looking smilingly on. Only the little
sister, who was not in the secret, was shrieking
lustily in protest.

I had been thinking of the cities in the plain of
Mesopotamia! And this carried me back to the

A WALLED CITY 211

days of my own childhood and the hills round
Ballarat! Many and many a time in my young
days have I seen the household baby offered to the
"vegetable John," and the small brothers and sisters
shrieking a terrified protest. " They would be
good, and love baby, and never be cross with him
any more." Here was I taking the place of the
smiling, bland, John Chinaman of my childhood.
After all human nature is much the same all the
world over, on the sunny hills of Ballarat, or in a
walled city at the foot of the mountains in Northern
China. If we could but bridge the gulf that lies
between, I expect we should have found it just
exactly the same on the banks of the Euphrates and
beneath the walls of Babylon.

CHAPTER XII

THE NlfrE DRAGON TEMPLE

The crossing of the Lanho — A dust storm — Dangers of a mew
inin — Locked in — Holy mountain — Ruined city — My inter-
preter— A steep hill — The barren woman — Unappetising food
— The abbot — The beggar — Burning incense — The beauty of
the way.

WE were fairly in the mountains when we left Tsung
Hua Chou. As we crawled along slowly, and I
trust with dignity, though dignity is not my strong
point, I looked up to the hills that towered above us,
almost perpendicular they seemed in places, as if
the slope had been shorn off roughly with a blunt
knife, and I saw that one of these crags, that must
have been about a thousand feet above the valley
bottom, anyhow it looked it in the afternoon sun-
light, was crowned by buildings ; and not feeling
energetic, nobody does feel energetic who rides for
long in a Peking cart, I thanked my stars that I had
not to go up there. I thought if it were the most
beautiful temple in the world I would not go up that
mountain to visit it. Which only shows that I did
not reckon on my Chinese servant. There may be
people who can cope single-handed with the will
of a Chinaman. I can't. I know now that if my
servant expresses a desire for a thing, he will only
ask, of course, for what is perfectly correct and good

212

A TEMPLE SET IN THE TREES.
(See page 307)

CROSSING THE LANHO.
(See page 213)

THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 213

for his Missie, he will have it in the end, so it is no
good struggling ; it is better to give in gracefully at
first.

As we neared a river, the Lanho, or I suppose I
should say the Lan, for " ho " means a river, the
clouds began to gather for the first time since I had
set out on my journey, and it seemed as if it were
going to rain.

" Must make haste," said Tuan looking up at the
grey sky with the clouds scurrying across it, and
making haste in a Peking cart is a painful process.

By the time we arrived at the river-banks it was
blowing furiously, and a good part of the country,
as always seems to be the case in China when the
wind blows, was in the air. The river, wide and
muddy and rather shallow, was flowing swiftly along,
and the crossing-place was just where the valley was
widest, and there was a large extent of sand on
either bank, so there was plenty of material for the
wind to play with. It used it as if it had never had
a chance before and was bound to make the most
of it. There were many other people on that sandy
beach, there were other Peking carts, there were
laden country carts with their heavily studded wheels
cut out of one piece of wood, looking like the wheels
Mr Reed puts on his prehistoric carts in Punch,
there were laden donkeys and mules, there were all
the blue-clad people in charge of the traffic, and
there were tiny restaurants, rough-looking shacks
where the refreshment of these people was provided
for. They weren't refreshing when I arrived, the
wind was blowing things away piecemeal, and every
man seemed to be grabbing something portable, or
putting it down with a stone upon it to anchor it.

214 A WOMAN IN CHINA

" Must make haste," said Tuan again, as he helped
me out of the cart, and the wind got under my coat,
tore at my veil, and succeeded in pulling down some
of my hair.

We had got beyond the region of bridges, I
suppose in the summer the floods come down and
sweep them away, and everybody was crossing on a
wupan, a long, shallow, ffat-bottomed boat that had
been decked in the middle to allow of carts being
taken across. The mules were taken out, and the
carts with the help of every available man about,
except the fat restaurant-keeper, were got on the
boat.

" Must make haste," repeated Tuan, distributing
with a liberal hand my hard-earned cents. I used to
think a cent or two in China didn't matter, but I
know by bitter experience they mount up.

And then just as we were all ready, my leading
mule, a fawn-coloured animal of some character,
expressed his disapproval of the mode of transit by
a violent kick, and broke away. The dust was
blowing in heavy clouds, but every now and then I
could see through the veil a dozen people racing
after him, while he kicked up his heels in derision,
and in a fashion of which I should not have thought
any beast that had brought a Peking cart so far
over such roads was capable. Then a brilliant
idea occurred to the younger "cartee man." He
decided to mount the white mule that led the other
cart. This was a meek-looking beast who I pre-
sume always did exactly as he was told ; but a worm
will turn, and to be ridden after all the long journey
was more than even he would stand. With a buck
and a kick he got rid of the "cartee man," and then

THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 215

there were two mules careering about in the wild dust
storm. It looked highly probable that they would
take advantage of their liberty to go back to Peking,
and I crossed that river wondering very much how
I was to get any farther on my journey, and whether
lost mules were a part of the just expenditure expected
of a foreign woman. After about two hours, how-
ever, they were brought in, the fawn-coloured mule
as perky as ever, but the white one so depressed by
his only taste of freedom that he never recovered as
long as I had the pleasure of his acquaintance.

Before we were on our way again the dust storm
had subsided, and I was shaking the mountains, or
the Gobi Desert, or whatever it was, out of the folds
of my clothes and out of my hair and eyes, and Tuan
was once more urgent.

" Must make haste.55

But it was no good, we had lost too much time, we
could not possibly reach the little town we had
planned to reach, and before the sun set we turned
into the yard of a little hostelry in a small mountain
hamlet underneath the holy mountain that was
crowned with the temple I had been looking at all
the afternoon.

And then to my joy I found that this place was
clean, actually clean!! Two notes of exclamation
do not do proper justice to it. The yard bore little
traces of occupation, the room I was shown into had
a new blue calico curtain at the door, it was freshly
whitewashed, a clean mat was on the k5ang, the wood
that edged it was new, and there was clean tissue
paper over the lattice-work of the windows. The
floor, of course, was only hard, beaten earth, but
that did not matter. I would sit on the k'ang, and

216 A WOMAN IN CHINA

besides this place smelt of nothing but whitewash.
I rejoiced exceedingly as I had the paper torn
off the top of the window to let in the fresh
air, but Tuan looked at it from another point of
view.

" Must take care," said he, " this new inn. ' Cartee
man ' no know she. Must take care," and he looked
so grave that I wondered what on earth was the
penalty I ran the risk of paying for cleanliness.

They evidently were afraid, for all the luggage,
which as a rule stayed strapped on the carts in the
inn yard, was taken off and brojught in. I was
worth robbing, for I had about seven-and-twenty
pounds in dollars in my black box, and that, judging
by what I saw, would have bought up all the
villages between Jehol and Peking. However, it
was no good worrying about it, however agitated
Tuan might be. Besides, anyhow he was some-
thing of a coward, all Chinese servants are, it seems
to me.

His fear didn't seem to last very long, for pres-
ently he came bustling in, all excitement.

I was brushing my hair to try and get some of the
dust out of it, and reflecting there was possibly some
reason in so many Chinese women being bald. It
must be much easier to keep a hairless head free
from dust.

" Missie, Missie, innkeeper man, she say my
Missie come in good time. Nine Dragon Temple,"
he pointed upwards, and I knew with a sinking heart
he meant the one I had watched all day and decided
that to it I would not go, "open one time for ten
day, never in year open any more," and he looked
at me to see his words sink in. They sank in right

THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 217

enough. I knew I was going there, but still I
protested.

" I cannot walk up that mountain."
" No walk, Missie no walk, can get chair."
Still I struggled. " It will cost too much money."
" Three dollars, Missie, can do. Not spend much
monies," and he looked at me as much as to say I
would never let three dollars, about six shillings,
stand between me and a wonder that was only open
for ten days in the year, especially when I had
arrived on the auspicious day.

" But what will you do, Tuan, I really cannot
afford a chair for you," for I knew my follower on
every occasion, even when I should have walked
made a point of riding. He looked at me, but I
suppose he saw I had reached the limit of my for-
bearance. His chest swelled out virtuously.
" I strong young man, I walk."
I made another effort. u But the bottom of the
mountain is a good way off, how shall I get there ? "
" I talkee ' cartee man/ he takee Missie two
dollars."

It was mounting up. I knew it would.
" But who will look after our things here ? "
"One piecey 'cartee man' stop," said he airily.
So it was all arranged and I was booked for the
Nine Dragon Temple whether I liked it or not.
Then there was the night to consider in this new inn,
the safety of which Tuan had doubted. In my room
were all my possessions, including the black box
with the money in it, and I looked at the door and
saw to my dismay that there was no fastening on the
inside.

" I take care Missie," said Tuan loftily, and then

218 A WOMAN IN CHINA

proceeded to instruct me in the precautions he had
taken.

" Innkeeper man ask how long Missie stay and I
say pVaps five day, p'r'aps ten day. No tell true."
No tell true indeed, lor I had every intention of
leaving next day even if I did have to go up to the
mountain temple in the morning.

Again I looked at the rough planks of the door
coming down to the earthen floor, and decided I
would draw my heavy box across it, and I said so
to Tuan.

But he was emphatic, " I take care Missie," I
wonder if he would have done so had there really
been any danger. Then he bid me good night and,
going outj drew the door to after him and proceeded
to lock it on the outside ! I presume he put the key
in his pocket. Some papers have honoured me by
referring to me as a " distinguished traveller," and I
have had hopes of being elected to the Royal
Geographical Society! For a moment I thought of
calling him back indignantly, and then I thought
better of it. "A man thinks he knows," says the
Chinese proverb, " but a woman knows better."

The window was frail and all across the room, and
I knew I could break the lattice-work if I wanted to,
so could the thief for that matter, so I slept peace-
fully, the sleep of the utterly weary, and the inn-
keeper proved an honest man after all.

And next day, after breakfast, just as the sun was
rising, I started for the Nine Dragon Temple, The
peak which it crowned stood out from the rest like
a very acute triangle. They say the camera cannot
lie, I only know I did not succeed in getting a photo-
graph of that mountain that gave any idea of its

THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 219

steepness. Its slopes, faintly tinged with green and
dotted with fir-trees, fell away like the sides of a
house from the narrow top that was crowned with
buildings. It was just one of the many holy moun-
tains that are scattered over China^ and it seemed to
me, looking up, that nothing but a bird could reach
it. But still I had to try. All the country was
bathed in the golden rays of the sun as I climbed
into the cart, and we made our way through a ruined
city that must once have been very rich and pros-
perous. Only the poorest of the poor apparently
lived among the ruins, and we went through a ruined
gateway where no man watched now, and over half-
tilled fields, to the supplementary temple at the
bottom of the mountain.

Here Tuan blossomed forth wonderfully. Up
till now he had only been my servant, a most impor-
tant servant but still a servant, now he became, on
a sudden, that much more important functionary, my
interpreter.

A solemn old gentleman in a dark-coloured robe
with a shaven head received me with that perfect
courtesy which it is my experience these monks
always show, escorted me into a large room with a
k'ang on one side and a figure of a god, large and
gorgeous, facing the door. He asked me my age,
as apparently the most important question he could
ask — it is rather an important factor in one's life —
and then when I was seated on the k'ang, with my
interpreter, in his very best clothes of silk brocade,
on the other, a variety of cakes in little dishes were
set on the k'ang table beside me, and a small shaven-
headed little boy who I was informed was called
" Trees " was set to pour out tea as long as I would

220 A WOMAN IN CHINA

drink it. I was so amused at the importance of
Tuan. Not for worlds would I have given him away
as he sat there sipping tea and nibbling at a piece
of cake ; and I wonder still what he thought I thought.
Did he fear I should call him to account for sitting
down as if he were on terms of equality with me?
Did he think I was a fool, or was he properly grate-
ful that I allowed him this little latitude? At any
rate, except in the matter of squeeze, he always
served me very well indeed, and there is no doubt
my dignity was enhanced by going about with a real,
live interpreter. The priest could not know what a
very inadequate one he was.

Presently they came and announced that the chair
was ready.

" Put on new ropes," announced my interpreter
pointing out the lashings to me. The chair was
fastened to a couple of stout poles and four coolies,
they might have been own brothers to the ones I
had at the Ming Tombs, lifted it to their shoulders
and we were off. All the people who dwelt in the
little hamlet that clustered round the temple at the
foot of the mountain, hoary-headed old men, little,
naked children, small-footed women, peeped out
and looked at the foreign woman as she passed on
her pilgrimage up the steep and narrow pathway,
the first foreigner that had passed up this way for
some years, and probably the only one who would
pass up this year. It took a good many people to
get me up, I noticed, it wouldn't have been Tuan if
it hadn't. There was his all-important self of course,
there was a man carrying my camera, another one
carrying my umbrella and a bundle of incense sticks,
there were various minor hangers-on in the shape of

THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 221

small boys, and there were, of course, my four chair
coolies.

A Chinese chair is a most uncomfortable thing
anyway, and this had exaggerated the faults of its
kind. Always it is so built that there is not seat
enough, while the back seems specially arranged to
pitch the unlucky occupant forward. It is bad enough
in the ordinary way — going up a mountain, and a
very steep mountain, it is anathema, and coming
down it is beyond words. And this mountain was
steep, its looks had not belied it ; never have I gone
up such a steep place before, never, I devoutly hope,
shall I go up such a steep place again. The moun-
tain fell away, and I looked out into space on either
side. I could see hills, of course, away in the far
distance, with a greaT gulf between me and them,
rounded, treeless hills with just a faint touch of green
upon them, and the trees on my own mountain, firs
and pines with an occasional poplar, green and fresh
with the tender green of Maytime, stood up at an
acute angle with the hill-side above, and an obtuse
angle below. The air was fresh, and keen, and in-
vigorating, and in the green grass grew bulbs like
purple crocuses, wild jessamine sweetly scented, and
delicate blue wild hyacinths, that in Staffordshire
they call blue bells. I remember once in a delight-
ful wood in the Duke of Sutherland's grounds near
Stoke-on-Trent, that most sordid town of the Black
Country, seeing the ground there carpeted with just
such blossoms as I saw here on the holy mountain
in China.

Up we went and up. There were stone steps put
together without mortar, all the way, and there were
platforms every here and there, where the weary

222 A WOMAN IN CHINA

might rest, and because the hill was so steep, these
platforms were generally made by piling up stones
that looked as if a touch would send them rolling to
the bottom of the mountain, a step and one would
be over oneself, for there were no barriers. It was
twelve li, four miles up, and the way was broken by
smaller temples dedicated to various gods, among
them one to the goddess who takes pity on barren
women. This one was half-way up the mountain,
and here we met a small-footed woman toiling along
with the aid of a stick. Half-way up that cruel
mountain she had crawled on her aching feet, and
every day she would come up, she told us, to burn
incense at the shrine. And she looked old, old. It
would be a miracle indeed, I thought, if she bore
that longed-for child. Hope must be dying very
hard indeed. And yet she must have known. Poor
thing, poor weary woman, what was the tragedy of
her life? Children, one would think, were a drug
in the market in China, they swarm everywhere. I
burned an incense stick for her and could only hope
the God of Pity would answer her prayer, and take
away her reproach before men.

Up and up and up, and so steep it grew I was
fain to shut my eyes else the sensation that I would
fall off into space would have been too much for me.
From the doorways of the wayside temples we passed
through we looked into space, and the mountains at
the other side of the valley seemed farther away than
ever. A cuckoo called and called again " Cuckoo !
Cuckoo ! " As we waited once a coolie passed with
a bamboo across his shoulder from which were slung
two very modern kerosene tins — Babylon and
America meeting — and they told me there was no

THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 223

water on the mountain, every drop had to be carried
up; and then the men took up the poles on their
shoulders and tramped on again, and every time
they changed the pole from one shoulder to the
other I felt I would surely fall off into the valley,
miles below. Up and up and up, they were stream-
ing with perspiration, and at last when it seemed to
me we had arrived at the highest point of the world,
and that it was very like a needle-point, they set
down my chair at the bottom of the flight of steps
that led up to the entrance to the main temple, and
the abbot and a crowd of monks stood at the top to
greet me.

They swarmed everywhere, it was impossible to
estimate their numbers, young men and old, all with
shaven heads and dark, rusty red robes, and then
others, blind, and halt, and maimed, evidently pen-
sioners on their bounty. It seemed to me it could
hardly be worth while to climb up so steep a place
for the small dole that was all the monks had it in
their power to give. It must have been so little, so
little. They showed me the shrine, a poor little
shrine to one who had seen the wonders of the Lama
Temple in Peking. I took a picture of the abbot
standing in front of it, and they showed me their
kitchen premises, where were great jars of vegetables
salted and in pickle, and looking most unappetising,
but that apparently, with millet porridge, was all
they had to live on.

It was crowded, it was dirty, it was shabby, but
there were great stone pillars, eighteen of them, that
they told me had been brought from a great distance
south of Peking, and had been carried up the moun-
tain in the days of the Mings, long before there were

224 A WOMAN IN CHINA

the steps, which were only put there a little over a
hundred years ago — quite recently for China. How
they could possibly get them up even now that there
are four miles of steep stone steps I cannot possibly
imagine. Babylon ! Babylon ! ! I shut my eyes
and saw the toiling slaves, heard the crack of the
taskmaster's whip, and the hopeless moan of the man
who sank, crushed and broken, beneath the burden.

The abbot bowed himself courteously over a gift
of thirty cents which Tuan, and I am sure he would
not have understated it, said was the proper cum-
sHftw, and I bade them farewell and turned to go
down that hill again. The thought of it was heavy
on my soul. Outside was a beggar, men are close
to starvation in China. The wretched, forlorn
creature, with wild hair and his nakedness hidden
by the most disgusting rags, had followed my train
up all those four steep miles in the hope of a small
gift. For five cents he too bowed himself in deepest
gratitude. It was a gift I was ashamed of, but the
important interpreter considered he had the right to
regulate these things, and he certainly led me care-
fully on all other occasions. Then I looked at my
chair and I looked at the steep steps down which we
must go. How could I possibly manage it without
getting giddy and pitching right forward, for going
down would be much worse than coming up had
been. And then the men showed me that I must get
in and be carried down backwards.

Would they slip? I could but trust not. I was
alone and helpless, days, and they must have known
it, from any of my own people. They might easily
have held me up and demanded more than the three
dollars for which they had contracted, but they did

THE NINE DRAGON TEMPLE 225

not. Patient, uncomplaining, as the Babylonish
slaves to whom I had compared them, they carried
me steadily and carefully from temple to temple all
the way down, and at every altar we stopped I sat
and looked on, and Tuan burned incense sticks, the
officiating priest, he was very poor, dirty and shabby,
struck a melodious gong as the act of adoration was
accomplished and Tuan, in all his best clothes, knelt
and knocked his head on the ground. I wondered
whether I, too, was not acquiring merit, for my
money had bought the incense sticks, and my money,
it was only a trifling ten cents, paid the wild-looking
individual, with torn coat and unshaven head, who
carried them up the mountain.

Oh, but I had something — something that I
cannot put into words — for my pains ; the something
that made the men of five hundred years before build
the temple on the mountain top to the glory of God,
my God and their God, by whatever Name you
choose to call Him. It was good to sit there looking
away at the distant vista, at the golden sunlight on
the trees and grass2 at the shadows that were creep-
ing in between, to smell the sensuous smell of the
jessamine, and if I could not help thinking of all I
had lost in life, of the fate that had sent me here to
the Nine Dragon Temple, at least I could count
among my gains the beauty that lay before my eyes.

And when I reached the bottom of the mountain
in safety, I felt I had gained merit, for the men who
had carried me so carefully were wild with gratitude,
and evidently called down blessings upon my head,
because I gave them an extra dollar. It pleased
me, and yet saddened me, because it seemed an
awful thing that twenty-five cents apiece, sixpence

p

226 A WOMAN IN CHINA

each, should mean so much to any man. Their
legs ached, they said. Poor things, poor things.
Many legs ache in China, and I am afraid more often
than not there is no one to supply a salve.

So we came back to the little mountain inn in the
glorious afternoon, and the people looked on us as
those who had made a pilgrimage, and Tuan climbed
a little way down from his high estate. He set
about getting me a meal, the eternal chicken, and
rice, and stewed pear, and I looked back at the
mountain I had climbed and wondered, and was
glad, as I am often glad, that I had done a thing I
need never do again.

Was there merit? For Tuan, let us hope, even
though I did pay for the incense sticks, for me, well
I don't know. On the mountain I was uplifted,
here in the valley I only knew that the view from
the high peak, the vista of hill and valley, the green-
ness of the fresh grass on the rounded, treeless hills,
and the greenness of the springing crops in the
valley, the golden sunshine and the glorious blue
sky of Northern China, the sky that is translucent
and far away, was something well worth remember-
ing. Truly it sometimes seems that all things that
are worth doing are hard to do.

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS

Etiquette of the Chinese cart — Ruined city— The building of the
wall— The advice of a mule — A catastrophe — The failing of
the Peking cart — Beautiful scenery — Industrious people —
The posters of the mountains — Inn yards — The heads of the
people — Mountain dogs — Wolves — A slum people — Artistic
hands— " Cavalry "—The last pass.

AND now we were on the very borders of China
proper. The road was simply awful, very often
just following the path of a mountain torrent.
Always my cart went first, and however convenient
it sometimes seemed for the other cart to take first
place, it never did so. Suppose we turned down a
narrow path between high banks and found we were
wrong and had to go back, the second cart would
make the most desperate effort and get up the
bank rather than go before me. Such is Chinese
etiquette, and like most rules and customs when one
inquires into the reason of them, there is some
sense at the bottom of it. A Chinese road is as a
rule terribly dusty and the second cart gets full
benefit of all the dust stirred up.

The day after we had been to the Nine Dragon
Temple we passed through the Great Wall at Hsing
Feng K'ou, another little walled city. We had
spent the night just outside the ruined wall of an old
city, a city that was nearly deserted. There were

227

228 A WOMAN IN CHINA

the old gateways and an old bell tower, even an old
cannon lying by the gate, but more than half the
people were gone, and those who remained were
evidently poor peasants, living there I should say
because building material was cheap, and eking
out the precarious existence of the poor peasant all
over China. The hills were very close down now
and the valleys very narrow, and on a high peak
close to the crumbling walls was the remains of a
beacon tower. Here by the border they had need
to keep sharp watch and ward. I suppose they
have nothing to fear now, or perhaps there is
nothing to take, but in one ruined gateway I passed
through they were tending swine, and in another
they were growing melons. At least it would never
be worth the raiders while to gather and carry away
the insipid melon of China.

The Wall is always wonderful. It was wonderful
here even in its decay. The country looked as if
some great giant had upheaved it in great flat slabs,
raising what had been horizontal almost into the
perpendicular. It would have been impossible I
should have thought for any man, let alone an
invading army, to cross there ; there were steep
grassy slopes on one side, on the other the precipice
was rough and impassable, and yet, on the very top
of the ridge, ran the wall, broken and falling into
decay in some places. I do not wonder that it has
not been kept in repair, what I wonder is that it was
ever built. Tradition says they loaded goats with
the material and drove them to the top of the hills,
but it seems to me more likely they were carried
by slaves. All the strenuous past lived for me
again as the sunlight touched the tops of the watch-

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 229

towers and I saw how carefully they were placed to
command a valley. And that life is past and gone,
the Manchus have conquered and passed away, and
the Mongols — well the Mongols they say, when
they come in contact with the Chinese, always beat
them, and yet it is the Chinese who, pushing out
beyond the Wall, settle on and till the rich Mongol
pasture lands. There is now no need of the Wall,
for the Chinese, the timid Chinese have gone
beyond it.

Inner Mongolia they call this country beyond the
Wall, and worse and worse got the road, sometimes
it was between high banks, sometimes on a ledge of
the hills, sometimes it followed the course of a
mountain torrent, but always the general direction
was the same, across or along a valley to steep and
rugged hills, hills sterile, stony, and forbidding,
and through which there seemed no possible way.
There was always a way to the valley beyond, but
after we passed the Wall I considered it possible only
for a Peking cart, and by and by I came to think it
was only by supreme good luck that a Peking cart
came through. There was a big brown mule in the
shafts of my cart, and the fawn mule led, so far
away that I wondered more than once whether he
had anything to do with the traction at all, or
whether it was only his advice that was needed.
He was a wise mule, and when he came to a
jumping-off place, with apparently nothing beyond
it, he used to pause and look round as much as to
say:

"Jeewhicks!" you couldn't expect much refine-
ment from a Chinese mule, "this is tall No
can do."

230 A WOMAN IN CHINA

The carter would jump down from his place on
the tail of the shaft. He would make a few remarks
in Chinese, which, I presume, freely translated
were:

" Not do that place ? What're yer givin' us ?
Do it on me Jed."

Then the fawn-coloured mule would return to his
work with a whisk of his tail which said plainly as
words :

" Oh all serene. You say can do. Well, I ain't
in the cart, I ain't even drawing the cart, and I
ain't particular pals with the gentleman in the shafts,
so here goes."

And the result justified the opinion of both. We
did get down, but it seemed to me a mighty narrow
squeak, and I was breathless at the thought that the
experience must be repeated in the course of the
next hour or so. At first I was so terrified I decided
I would walk, then I found it took me so long — one
mountain pass finished off a pair of boots — and there
were so many of them I decided I had better put my
faith in the mules if I did not wish to delay the outfit
and arrive at Jehol barefoot. But I never went up
and down those passes without bated breath and a
vow that never, never again would I trust myself in
the mountains in a Peking cart. Still I grew to
have infinite faith in the Peking cart. I was
bruised and sore all over, and I found the new
nightgowns and chemises in my box were worn into
holes with the jolting, but I believed a Peking cart
could go anywhere, and then my confidence received
a rude shock.

We came to a stony place, steep and stony
enough in all conscience, but as nothing to some of

THROUGH THE GREAT WALL INTO INNER MONGOLIA,

PEKING CART UPSET.

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 231

the places we had passed over, where there had
been a precipice on one side and a steep cliff on the
other, and where to go over would certainly have
spelled grave disaster, but here there was a bank at
either side and the fawn-coloured mule never even
looked round before negotiating it. Up, up went one
side of the cart, but I was accustomed to that by this
time, up, up, the angle grew perilous, and then over
we went, and I was in the tilt of the cart, almost on
my head, and the brown mule in the shafts seemed
trying to get into the cart backwards. I didn't
see how he could, but I have unlimited faith in the
powers of a Chinese mule, so, amidst wild yells
from Tuan and the carters, I was out on to the hill-
side before I had time to think, and presently was
watching those mules make hay of my possessions.
They didn't leave a single thing either in or on that
cart, camera, typewriter, cushions, dressing-bag, bed-
ding, all shot out on to what the Chinaman is pleased
to consider the road, even the heavy box, roped on
behind, got loose and fell off, and the mule justified
my expectations by, in some mysterious way, break-
ing the woodwork at the top of the cart and tearing
all the blue tilt away. It took us over an hour to
get things right again, and my faith in the stability
of a Peking cart was gone for ever.

We were right in the very heart of the mountains
now, and the scenery was magnificent, close at hand
hills, sterile and stony, and behind them range after
range of other blue hills fading away into the bluer
distance. Day after day I looked upon a scene that
would be magnificent in any land, and here
in China filled me with wonder. Could this be
China, practical, prosaic China, China of the ages,

232 A WOMAN IN CHINA

this beautiful land? And always above me was
the blue sky, always the golden sunshine and the
invigorating, dry air that reminded me, as I have
never before been reminded, of Australia.

But, however desolate and sterile the hills, and
they seldom had more than an occasional fir-tree
upon them, in the valleys were always people and
evidences of their handiwork in the shape of wonder-
fully tilled fields. There are no fences, the China-
man does not waste his precious ground in fences,
but between the carefully driven furrows there is
never a weed, and all day long the people are
engaged turning over the ground so that it will not
cake, and may benefit by every drop of moisture
that may be extracted from the atmosphere. A
little snow in the winter, a shower or two in April,
and the summer rains in July or August, are all this
fruitful land requires for a bountiful harvest, but I
am bound to say it is fruitful only because of the
intense care that is given to it. No one surely but
a Chinese peasant would work as these people
work. In every valley bottom there is, according
to its size, a town, perhaps built of stones with
thatched roofs, a small hamlet, or at least a farm-
house, enclosed either behind a neat mud wall or
a more picturesque one of the yellow stalks of the
kaoliang. And the people are everywhere, in the
very loneliest places far up on the hills I would see
a spot of blue herding black goats or swine, and on
parts of the road far away from any habitation, when
I began to think I had really got beyond even the
ubiquitous Chinaman, we would meet a forlorn,
ragged figure, an old man past other work or a small
boy with a bamboo across his shoulders and slung

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 233

from it two dirty baskets. With scoop in hand he
was gathering the droppings of the animals with
which to make argol for fuel, for enough wood is not
to be had, and in this respect so industrious are the
Chinese that their roads are really the cleanest I
have ever seen.

There were strangely enough here, in the heart
of the mountains, signs of foreign enterprise, for
however desolate the place might seem, sooner or
later we were sure to come across the advertisements
of the British American Tobacco Company. There
they would be in a row great placards advertising
Rooster Cigarettes, or Peacock Cigarettes or Purple
Mountain Cigarettes, half a dozen pictures, and then
one upside down to attract attention. I never saw
the men who put them there, and I hate the blatant
advertisement that spoils the scenery as a rule.
Here I greeted them with a distinct thrill of pleasure.
Here were men of my race and colour, doing
pioneering work in the out-of-the-way corners of the
earth, and I metaphorically made them a curtsy and
wished them well, for no one knows better than I
do the lonely lives they lead. But they are bringing
China in touch with the outside world.

By and by we came to a place where carts were
not seen, the people were wiser than I, but there
was a constant stream of laden mules and donkeys
bringing grain inside the wall. Long before I
could see them I could hear the jingling of the
collar of bells most of them wore, and in an inn yard
we always met the train and saw them start out
before us in the morning, though we were early
enough, I saw to that, often have I had my breakfast
before five o'clock, or coming in after we did in the

234 A WOMAN IN CHINA

dusk of the evening. I objected to travelling in the
dusk. I felt the roads held pitfalls enough without
adding darkness to our other difficulties.

The inns grew poorer and poorer as we got deeper
into the mountains but always I found in those inn
yards something interesting to look at. By night I
was too weary to do anything but go to bed, but I
generally had my tiffin in a shady spot in a corner
of the yard and watched all that was going on. The
yard would be crowded with animals, mules, and
donkeys, and always there were people coming and
going, who thought the foreign woman was a sight
not to be missed. There have been missionaries
here or in Chihli for the last hundred years, so they
must have seen foreign women, but the sight cannot
be a common one judging by the way they stared.
There would be well-to-do Chinamen riding nice-
looking donkeys, still more prosperous ones borne
in litters by a couple of protesting mules, and in
every corner of the yard would be beasts eating.
And all these beasts of burden required numerous
helpers, and the hangers-on were the most dilapid-
ated specimens of humanity I have ever seen, not
nearly so sure of a meal, I'm afraid, as the pigs
and hens that wandered round scavenging. There
would be an occasional old woman and very, very
seldom a young one with large feet marking her as
belonging to the very poorest class, but mostly they
were men dressed in blue cotton, faded, torn, ragged,
and yet patched beyond recognition.

" Patch beside patch is neighbourly," says an old
saw, " but patch upon patch is beggarly." The poor
folks in the inn yards not only had patch upon
patch, but even the last patches were torn, and they

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 235

looked far more poverty-stricken than the children
who played about this pleasant weather wearing only
their birthday dress. But they all had something
to do. An old man whose bald head must have
required little shaving and whose weedy queue was
hardly worth plaiting, drew water from the well,
another who had adopted the modern style of dress-
ing the hair gathered up the droppings of the
animals, a small boy with wild hair that no one had
time to attend to, and clad in a sort of fringe of rags,
drove away the hideous black sow and her numerous
litter when she threatened to become a nuisance, and
from earliest dawn to dark there were men cutting
chaff. The point of a huge knife was fixed in the
end of a wooden groove, one man pushed the fodder
into its position and another lifted the knife by its
wooden handle and brought it down with all his
strength. Then he lifted it, and the process was
repeated. I have seen men at work thus, in the
morning before it was light enough to see, I have
seen them at it when the dusk was falling. There
do not seem to be any recognised hours for stopping
work in China. And all the heads of these people
were wild. If they wore a queue it was dirty and
unplaited, and the shaven part of their heads had
a week's growth of bristles, and if they were more
modern in their hair-dressing, their wild black hair
stuck out all over the place and looked as if it had
originally been cut by the simple process of sticking
a basin on the head and clipping all the hairs that
stood out round it. But untidy heads of hair are
not peculiar to the inn yard, they are common enough
wherever I have been in China. There were always
innumerable children in the yard, too, with heads

236 A WOMAN IN CHINA

shaven all but little tails of hair here and there,
which, being plaited stiffly, stood out like the head-
gear of a clown, and there were cart men and donkey
men, just peasants in blue, with their blouses
girt round their waists. There were the guests,
too, petticoated Chinese gentlemen, squires, or
merchants, or well-to-do farmers, standing in the
doorways looking on, and occasionally ladies,
dressed in the gayest colours, with their faces
powdered and painted, peeped shyly out, half
secretively, as if they were ashamed, but felt they
must take one look at the foreign woman who walked
about as if she were not ashamed of the open day-
light, and was quite capable of managing for herself.
Sometimes I was taken to the women's quarters,
where the women-folk of the innkeeper dwelt, and
there, seated on a k'ang, in a room that had never
been aired since it was built, I would find feminine
things of all ages, from the half-grown girl, who in
England would have been playing hockey, to the old
great grandmother who was nursing the cat. They
always offered me tea, and I always took it, and they
always examined my dress, scornfully I am afraid,
because it was only of cotton, and wanted to lay
their fingers in the waves of my hair, only I drew
the line at those dirty hands coming close to my
face. At first it all seemed strange, but in a day I felt
as if I had been staying in just such inns all my life.
The farther one wanders I find the sooner does
novelty wear off. As a little girl, to go fifty miles
from my home and to have my meals off a different-
patterned china gave me a delightful sense of
novelty, and to sleep in a strange bed kept me awake
all night. Now in an hour — oh far less — nothing

INN YARD LITTER WITH MULES WAITING TO BE LOADED.

INN YARD IN THE MOUNTAINS MY CARTS.

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 287

feels new, not even the courtyard of a Chinese
mountain inn.

I have never seen so many people with goitres.
The missionaries at Jehol told me it was very much
dreaded, and that the people brought the affliction
upon themselves by flying into violent passions. I
doubt very much whether that is the origin of the
goitre ; but that it is very much dreaded, I can quite
believe. For not only does a goitre look most un-
sightly, but the unfortunate possessor must always
keep his head very straight, for if he lets it drop for-
ward, even for a moment, he closes the air passages,
and is in danger of suffocating. I have heard it is
brought on by something in the water. Water, of
course, I never dared drink in China. I saw very
pleasant, clear-looking, liquid drawn up from the
wells in those inn courtyards in closely plaited
buckets of basket-work, but I never ventured upon
it. I always remembered Aunt Eliza :

" In the drinking well

Which the plumber built her,
Aunt Eliza fell.
We must buy a filter."

Aunt Eliza's cheerful, if somewhat callous,
legatees had some place where they could buy a
filter, I had not, besides, I am sure, all the filters in
the world could not make safe water drawn from a
well in a Chinese inn yard, so I drank tea, which
necessitates the water being boiled.

The Chinese build their wells with the expectation
of someone, not necessarily Aunt Eliza, coming to
grief in them. On one occasion a man of my
acquaintance was ordering a well to be made in his
yard, and he instructed the well-sinker that he need

238 A WOMAN IN CHINA

not make it, as the majority of Chinese wells are
made, much wider at the bottom than at the top.
But the workman shook his head.

He must make it, he said, wide enough at the
bottom for a man — or woman, they are the greatest
offenders — to turn round if he flung himself in. He
might change his mind and want to get out again,
and if a body were found in a well not roomy enough
to allow of this change of mind, he, the builder,
would be tried for murder.

This thoughtful consideration for the would-be
suicide, who might wish to repent, is truly Chinese.
Personally I doubt very much whether anyone would
take the trouble to investigate the bottom of a well.
There might easily be something very much worse
than Aunt Eliza in it. Presumably she was a well-
to-do, and therefore a clean old lady, while the
frequenters of those yards were beyond description.

The people in the little towns, and more especially
those in the lonely farm-houses which looked so
neat and well-kept in contrast with the ragged, dirty
objects that came out of them, kept a most hand-
some breed of dogs. Sometimes they were black
and white, or grey, but more often they were a
beautiful tawny colour. They were, apparently, of
the same breed as the wonks that infest all Chinese
towns, but there was the same difference between
these dogs and the wonks as there is between a
miserable, mangy mongrel and the pampered beast
that takes first prize at a great show. Indeed, I
should like to see these great mountain dogs at a
show, I imagine they would be hard to beat. They
looked very fierce, whether they are or not I don't
know, because I always gave them a wide berth, and

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 289

Tuan, the cautious, always shook his head when
one came too close, called to someone else with a
stick to drive it away, and murmured his usual
formula : " Must take care." They told me there
were wolves among these mountains, and I can quite
believe it, though I never saw one. In the dead of
winter they are fierce and dangerous, and much
dreaded. They come into the villages, steal the
helpless children, will make a snap at a man in pass-
ing and inflict terrible wounds. A Chinaman will
go to sleep in all sorts of uncomfortable spots, and
more than one has been wakened by having half
the side of his face torn away. Of such a wound as
this the man generally dies, but so many are seen
who have so suffered, and gruesome sights they are,
that the wolves must be fairly numerous and exceed-
ingly bold. They take the children, too, long before
the winter has come upon the land. There was a
well-loved child, most precious, the only son of the
only son, and his parents and grandparents being
busy harvesting they left him at home playing
happily about the threshold. When they came back,
after a short absence, they found he had been so
terribly mauled by a wolf that shortly after he died,
and the home was desolate. And yet these wolves
are very difficult to shoot.

" I have never seen one," a man told me. " Again
and again, when I was in the mountains, the
villagers would come complaining of the depreda-
tions of a wolf. I could see for myself the results of
his visit, but never, never have I found the wolf.
It seems as if they must smell a gun."

When first I heard of the wolves I laughed. I
was so sure no beast of prey could live alongside

240 A WOMAN IN CHINA

a Chinaman, the Chinaman would want to eat
him.

" They would if they could catch him," said my
friend, " but they can't, though the majority of the
population are on the look-out for him. There is
nothing of the hunter about the Chinaman."

" Meat! " said a wretched farmer once, rubbing his
stomach, when the missionaries fed him during a
famine. He couldn't remember when he had tasted
meat, and not in his most prosperous year had he
had such a feast as his saviours had given him then.
"How much do you make a year?" asked the
missionary.

He thought a little and then he said that, in a good
year, he perhaps made twelve dollars, but then, of
course, all years were not good years. But we, on
our part, must remember that these people belong to
another age, and that the purchasing power of the
dollar for their wants is greater than it is with us.

Very, very lonely it seems to me must these
mountain villages be when the frost of winter holds
the hills in its grip, very shut out from the world were
they now in the early summer, and very little could
they know of the life that goes on within the Wall, let
alone in other lands. Indeed there are no other
lands for the Chinese of this class, this is his country,
and this suffices for him, everybody else is in outer
barbarism.

Steeper and steeper grew the hills, more and more
toilsome the way, and the people, when we stopped,
looked more and more wonderingly at the stranger.
At one place, where I had tiffin, I shared the room
and the k'ang, the sun was so hot and there was
no shade, so I could not stay outside, with six women

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 241

of all ages, two had babies that had never been
washed, two had hideous goitres, and all had their
hair gathered into long curved horns at the back.
There was also on the floor, a promising litter of
little pigs, and three industrious hens. The women's
blue coats were old, torn, patched, soiled, and yet —
oh the pity of it, these women, who had to work
hard for their living, work in the fields probably, had
their feet bound. One had not, but all the rest were
maimed. Two of them had their throats all bruised,
and I wondered if they had been trying to hang them-
selves as a means of getting away from a life that had
no joy in it, but I afterwards found that with two
coins, or anything else that will serve the purpose,
coins are probably rather scarce, they pinch up the
flesh and produce these bruises as a counter-irritant,
and, ugly as it looks, it is often very effective.

These should have been country people, if ever
any people belonged to the country, and then, as I
looked at them, the truth dawned on me. There
are no country people in the China I have seen, as
I from Australia know country people, the men of
the bush. They — yes — here in the mountains, are
a people of mean streets, a slum people, decadent,
the very sediment of an age-long civilisation. I
said this to a man who had lived long in China and
spoke the language well, and he looked at me in
surprise.

"Why," he said, "they all seem to me country
people. The ordinary people of the towns are just
country yokels."

But we meant exactly the same thing. I looked
at the country people I had known all my life, the
capable, resourceful pioneers, facing new conditions,

Q

242 A WOMAN IN CHINA

breaking new ground, ready for any emergency, the
men who, if they could not found a new nation, must
perish ; he was looking at the men from sleepy little
country villages in the old land, men who had been
left behind in the race. And so we meant exactly
the same thing, though we expressed it in apparently
opposing terms. These people are serfs, struggling
from dawn to dark for enough to fill their stomachs,
toiling along a well-worn road, without originality,
bound to the past, with all the go and initiative
crushed out of them. As their fathers went so must
they go, the evils that their fathers suffered must
they suffer, and the struggle for a bare existence is
so cruelly hard, that they have no hope of improving
themselves.

It was all interesting, wonderful, but I do not think
ever in the world have I felt so lonely. I longed
with an intense longing to see someone of my own
colour, to speak with someone in my own tongue.

I don't know that I was exactly afraid, and yet
sometimes when I saw things that I did not under-
stand, I wondered what I should do if anything did
happen. Considering the way some people had
talked in Peking, it would have been a little surprising
if I had not. Once we came upon a place where the
side of the road was marked with crosses in whitewash
and I wondered. I remembered the stories I had
heard of the last anti-Christian outbreak, and I
wondered if those crosses had anything to do with
another. It all sounds very foolish now, but I
remember as cross after cross came into view I was
afraid, and at last I called Tuan and asked him what
they meant.

" Some man," said he, " give monies mend road,

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 248

puttee white so can see where mend it." And that
was all ! But what that road was like before it was
mended I cannot imagine!

At last, after a wearying day's journey of one
hundred and twenty li, or forty miles, over the
roughest roads in the world, we came in the evening
sunlight upon a long line of grunting, ragged camels
just outside a great square gate enclosed in heavy
masonry, and we were at Pa Kou, as it is spelt by
the wisdom of those who have spelled Chinese, but
it is pronounced Ba Go. It is a city or rather a long
street, twenty li or nearly seven miles long, and the
houses were packed as closely together in that
street as they are in London itself. The worst of
the journey, Tuan told me, was over. There was
another range of mountains to cross, we had been
going north, now we were to go west, it would take
us two days and we would be in Jehol.

And here, for the first time, the authorities took
notice of me. The first inn we stopped at was dirty,
and Tuan went on a tour of inspection to see if he
could not find one more to his Missie's liking, and
I sat in my cart and watched the crowded throng,
and thought that never in my life had I been so
tired — I ached in every limb. If the finding of an
inn had depended on me I should simply have gone
to sleep where I was. At last it was decided there
was none better, and into the crowded and dirty yard
we went, and I, as soon as my bed was put up, had
my bath and got into it, as the only clean place there
was, besides I was too tired to eat, and I thought I
might as well rest.

But I had been seen sitting in the street, and the
Tutuh of the town, the Chief Magistrate, sent his

244 A WOMAN IN CHINA

secretary to call upon the " distinguished traveller "
and to ask if she, Tuan, who never could manage the
pronouns, reported it as " he/' had a passport. The
" distinguished traveller " apologised for being in bed
and unable to see the great man's secretary, and sent
her servant — I noticed he put on his best clothes, so
I suppose he posed as an interpreter — to show she
had a passport all in order. He came back looking
very grave and very important.

" She say must take care, plenty robber, must
have soldier."

Here was a dilemma. I had heard so much about
the robbers of China, and the robbers of China are
by no means pleasant gentlemen to meet. A robber
band is not an uncommon thing, but is more
dangerous probably, to the people of the land than
to the foreigner, for here in the north the lesson
of 1900 has been well rubbed in. It is a dangerous
thing to tackle a foreigner. Dire is the vengeance
that is exacted for his life. Still I wasn't quite com-
fortable in my own mind. I thought of the mighty
robber White Wolf, who ravaged Honan, of whom
even the missionaries and the British American
Tobacco Company are afraid. On one occasion
two missionaries were hunted by his band and driven
so close that, as they lay hidden under a pile of
straw, a pursuer stood on the shoulder of one of
them. He lay hardly daring to breathe and the
robber moved away without discovering their hiding-
place. Afterwards, however, they did fall into the
hands of White Wolf, who, contrary to their expecta-
tions, courteously fed them and set them on their
way. Of course, they had nothing of which to be
despoiled, and it was their good-fortune to fall into

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 245

the hands of the leader himself, who knows a little of
the world, and something of the danger of attacking
a foreigner. The danger had been that they might
fall into the hands of his men, his ignorant followers,
who, in their zeal, would probably kill them, perhaps
with torture, and report to the chief later on. This
happened after I had been to Jehol, but, of course,
I had heard of White Wolf. I knew his country was
farther to the south in the more disturbed zone, and
I did not expect to meet robbers here. Still I had
the Tutuh's word for it that here they were.

If you are going to have any anxiety in the future,
I have come to the conclusion it is just as well to
be dead tired. I couldn't do anything, and I was
utterly tired out. I had been in the open air all day
since five o'clock in the morning, I was safe, in all
probability, for the night, and robbers or no robbers,
I felt I might as well have a sound night's rest and
see what the situation looked like in the morning. I
heard afterwards there were missionaries in the town,
and had I known it, I might have sought them out
and taken counsel with men of my own colour, but I
did not know it.

" Must have soldier," repeated Tuan emphatically,
standing beside my camp bed. " How many soldier
Missie want? "

I had heard too many stories of Chinese soldiers
to put much reliance on them as protectors. I
didn't know offhand how many I wanted. I was by
no means sure that I wouldn't be just as safe with
the robbers. One thing was certain, I couldn't go
back within two days of my destination, besides for
all I knew, the robbers were behind me.

I put it to Tuan.

246 A WOMAN IN CHINA

" Suppose I have no passport, what the Tutuh do
then?"

" Then," said my henchman emphatically, " he no
care robber get Missie."

Evidently the Tutuh meant well by me, so I said
they might send a soldier for me to look at, at six
o'clock next morning and then I would decide
how many I would have, and feeling that at least I
had eleven hours respite, I turned over and went to
sleep.

Punctually the soldier turned up. He was a
good-tempered little man, all in blue a little darker
than the ordinary coolie wears, over it he had a red
sleeveless jacket marked with great black Chinese
characters, back and front, a mob cap of blue was
upon his head, over his eyes a paper lampshade ;
he had a nice little sturdy pony, and, for all arms,
a fly whisk!

I didn't feel I could really be afraid of him, and I
strongly suspected the robbers would thoroughly
agree with me.

" What's he for?" I asked Tuan.

That worthy looked very grave. " Must take
care," he replied with due deliberation. " Plenty
robber. She drive away robber. How many
soldier Missie have?"

Well there was nothing for it but to face the
danger, if danger there was. I don't know now if
there was any. It is so difficult to believe that any
unpleasant thing will happen to one. Again I
reflected that there is no danger in China till the
danger actually arrives, and then it is too late. What
my guardian was to drive away robbers with I am
sure I don't know, for I cannot see that the fly whisk

STREET IN PA KOU.

"CAVALRY."

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 247

would have been very effective. The " cartee men "
were perfectly willing to go on, so I said I thought
this warrior would be amply sufficient for all pur-
poses, and we started.

Everybody in Pa Kou keeps a lark, I should
think, and every one of those larks were singing
joyously as we left the town. Never have I heard
such a chorus of bird song, and the morning was
delightful. My guardian rode ahead, and for three
hours as we jolted over the track, I kept a look-out
for robbers, wondered what they would be like, and
what I should do when we met, but the only things
I saw were bundles of brushwood for the kitchen
fires of Pa Kou, apparently walking thitherward on
four donkey legs. They reassured me, those
bundles of brushwood, they had such a peaceful look.
Somehow I didn't think we were going to meet any
robbers.

Evidently Tuan and the " cartee men " came to
the same conclusion, for, at the end of three hours,
they came and said the soldier must be changed, did
Missie want another? Missie thought she didn't,
and the guard was dismissed, his services being
valued at twenty cents. It was plenty, for he came,
with beaming face, and bowed his thanks.

That was the only time I had anything to do with
soldiers on the journey, and I forgot all about him,
hieroglyphics, lampshade, fly whisk, and all, till I
found entered in the accounts, Tuan was a learned
clerk and kept accounts : " Cavalry, twenty cents."

Then I felt I had had more than my money's
worth.

The last night of my journey I spent at Liu Kou,
the sixth valley, and the next morning the men made

248 A WOMAN IN CHINA

tremendous efforts to hide all trace of the disaster
that had befallen us on the way. I said it didn't
matter, it could wait till we got to Jehol, but both
Tuan and the " cartee men " were of a different
opinion. Apparently they would lose face if they
came to their journey's end in such a condition, and
I had to wait while the cloth was taken off the
back of the cart, and carefully put on in front, so
that the broken wood was entirely concealed.
Then, when everybody was satisfied that we were
making at least a presentable appearance, we started.
You see, I never appreciated the situation properly.
To travel in a cart seemed to me so humble a mode
of progression, that it really did not matter very
much whether it were broken or not, indeed a broken
cart seemed more to me like going the whole hog,
and roughing it thoroughly while we were about it.
But with the men it was different, a cart was a most
dignified mode of conveyance, and to enter a big
town in a broken one was as bad as travelling in a
motor with all the evidences of a breakdown upon
it, due to careless driving. And when I saw their
point of view, of course I at once sat down on some
steps and watched an old man draw water, and a
disgusting-looking sow, who made me forswear
bacon, attend to the wants of her numerous black
progeny.

Tuan passed the time by having a heated argu-
ment with the landlord. The fight waxed furious,
as I was afterwards told, regarding the hot water I
had required for my bath, which was heated in a
long pipe, like a copper drain-pipe, that was inserted
in a hole by the k'ang fire. Fuel is scarce, and stern
necessity has seen to it that these people get the

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 249

most they possibly can out of a fire. I hope Tuan
paid him fairly, but of course I do not know, I parted
with a dollar for the night's lodging and the little
drop of hot water, for otherwise we carried our own
fuel — charcoal — bought our provisions and cooked
for ourselves, but we left that landlord protesting at
the gate that he would never put up another foreigner.
That last day's journey was, I think, the hardest
day of all, or perhaps it was that I was tired out.
There was a long, long mountain to be got over,
the Hung Shih La, the Red Stone Rock, and we
crossed it by a pass, the worst of many mountain
passes we had come across. We climbed up slowly
to the top and there was a tablet to the memory of
the man who had repaired the road. What it was
like before it was repaired I can't imagine, or per-
haps it was not done very recently, say within a
couple of hundred years, for the road was very bad.
There is only room for one vehicle, and the carters
raised their voices in a loud singsong, to warn all
whom it might concern that they were occupying the
road. What would happen if one cart entered at
one end and another at the other I am sure I cannot
imagine, for there seemed to be no place that I
could see where they could pass each other, and I
think it must be at least three steep miles long.
I did not trust the carts. I walked. My faith in a
Peking cart and mule had gone for ever, and if we
had started to roll here, it seemed to me, we should
not have stopped till we reached America or Siberia
at least. So every step of the way I walked, and
Tuan would have insisted that the carts come behind
me. But here I put my foot down, etiquette or no
etiquette I insisted they should go in front. I felt

250 A WOMAN IN CHINA

it would be just as bad to be crushed by a falling cart
as to be upset in it^ so they went on ahead, and when
we met people, and we met a good many on foot,
Tuan called out to them and probably explained
that such was the foolish eccentricity of his Missie
that, though she was rich beyond the dreams of
avarice, and always travelled with two carts, she yet
insisted upon walking down all the passes.

It was worth it too, for the view was glorious, the
sunlight, the golden sunlight of a Chinese afternoon,
fell on range after range of softly rounded hills, the
air was so clear that miles and miles away I could
see their folds, with here and there a purple shadow,
and here and there the golden light. And over all
was the arc of the blue sky. Beautiful, most beau-
tiful it was, and I was only regretful that, like so
many of the beautiful things I have seen in life, I
looked on it alone. I shall never look on it again.
The journey is too arduous, too difficult, but I
am glad, very glad indeed, that I have seen it
once.

But it was getting late. At the bottom of the pass
I got into my cart, and was driven along a disused
mountain torrent that occupied the bed of the valley
under a line of trees just bursting into leaf. The
shadows were long with the coming night, and at
last we forded a shallow river and came into the
dusty, dirty town of Cheng Teh Fu, an unwalled
town beyond which is Jehol, the Hunting Palace of
the Manchu Emperors.

Here there were thousands of soldiers, not like
my " cavalry," but modern, khaki-clad men like those
in Peking, gathered together to go against the
Mongols, for China was at war, and apparently was

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS 251

getting the worst of it, and the air was ringing with
bugle calls.

And then Tuan and I had an argument. He
wanted me to go to an inn. The streets were dusty,
dirty, evil-smelling, I was weary to death, my dress
had been rubbed into holes by the jolting of the
cart, and my flesh rebelled at the very thought of a
Chinese inn. But what was I to do? There were
no Europeans in Jehol save the missionaries, and I
was so very sure it was wasted labour to try and
convert the Chinese it seemed unfair to go to the
mission station.

And then I suddenly felt I must speak to someone,
must hear my own tongue again, must be sympath-
ised with, by a woman if possible, and in spite of the
protests of Tuan who saw all chance of squeeze at
an end, I made them turn the mules' heads to the
mission.

There a sad, sweet-faced woman gave me, a total
stranger, the kindest and warmest of welcomes,
and I paid off the " cartee men." For sixty dollars
they had brought me two hundred and eighty miles,
mostly across the mountains, they had been honest,
hard-working, attentive, patient, and good-
tempered, and for a cumskaw of five dollars they
bowed themselves to the ground. I know they got
it, because I took the precaution to pay them myself,
and as I watched them go away down the street I
made a solemn vow that never again would I travel
in the mountains, and never, never again would I
submit myself to the tender mercies of a Peking
cart. It is one of the things I am glad I have done,
but I am glad also it is behind me with no necessity
to do again.

CHAPTER XIV

" TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS "

Missionary compound — Prayer—Reputed dangers of the way— The
German girl— Midwife— The Bible as a guide — " My yoke is
easy, My burden is light " — A harem — Helping the sick and
afflicted — A case of hysteria — Drastic remedies — Ensuring
a livelihood — " Strike, strike " — Barbaric war-song — The
Chinese soldier — The martyrdom of the Roman Catholic
priest.

AND with my entrance into that missionary com-
pound I entered a world as strange to me as the
Eastern world I had come across two continents
to see.

The compound is right in the heart of the town,
and was originally a Chinese inn, built, in spite of
the rigour of the climate, Chinese fashion, so that
to go from one room to the other it was necessary
to go out of doors. The walls looking on to the
street were blank, except in the room I occupied,
where was a small window, so high up I could not
see out of it. How it must be to pass from one room
to the other when the bitter winter of Northern China
holds the mountains in its grip, I do not know.

I walked in out of the unknown and there came
forward to meet me that sad-looking woman with
the soft brown eyes and bright red lips. Take me
in, yes, indeed she would take me in. I was dusty,
I was torn, and I think I was more weary than I

252

"TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 258

have ever been in my life, and she made me wel-
come, made me lie down in a long chair, and had
tea brought in. A tall buxom German girl entered,
and then to my surprise, and not a little to my dis-
comfort, my hostess bowed her head, and thanked
God openly that I had come through the dangers of
the way, and been brought safely to their compound !
For a moment it took my breath away, and so self-
conscious was I, that I did not know which way to
look. My father was a pillar of the Church of
England, Chancellor of the Diocese in which we
lived, and I had been brought up straitly in the fold,
among a people who, possibly, felt deeply on occa-
sion, but who never^ never would have dreamt of
applying religion personally and openly to each
other. Frankly I felt very uncomfortable after I
had been prayed over, and it seemed a sort of bathos
to go on calmly drinking tea and eating bread and
jam. The German girl had just arrived, and they
heard that the day after she had left Peking, the
German Consul had sent round to the mission
station, where she had been staying, to cancel her
passport, and to say that on no account must she go
to Jehol as the country was too disturbed. How-
ever she and her escort, one of the missionaries, had
come through quite safely, and the Tartar General
in charge here had said she might stay so long as
she did not go outside the boundaries of the town.
But naturally, they were much surprised to see me,
a woman and alone.

I looked round the room, the general sitting-
room, a bare stone-floored room, with a mat or two
upon it, a little cane furniture, a photograph or two,
and some texts upon the walls, a harmonium, a

254 A WOMAN IN CHINA

couple of tables, and a book-case containing some
very old-fashioned books, mostly of a religious
tendency, and some stories fyy A.L.O.E. There
was a time when I thought A.L.O.E.'s stories
wonderful, and so I read one or two of them while
I was here, and wondered what it was that had
charmed me when I was eleven.

The only other woman in that compound, beside
my hostess, was the German girl who had come out
to help.

" I gave myself to the Lord for China," she said,
and she spoke simply and quietly, as if she were
saying the most natural thing in the world, as if
there could be no doubt of the value of the gift —
truly it was her all, she could not give more. And
the Chinese did need her, I think — that is only my
opinion — but not exactly in the way she counted
most important. She had taken the precaution to
become a midwife, and indeed she must be a god-
send, for Chinese practices are crude and cruel in
the extreme. It is the child that counts, the mother,
even in her hour of travail, must literally make no
moan. A woman once told me how she went to
see her amah, who was expecting a baby, and she
was asked to wait. She waited about an hour, for
she was anxious about the woman, and the room
was very still, there was no sound till the silence
was broken by the first cry of the new-born infant.
The child had been born behind the screen while
she waited, and an hour later, to her horror, the
white-faced young mother was up and preparing to
cook the family evening meal. The woman would
not have cried out for the world. No Chinese
woman would. If poor human flesh is weak, and a

"TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS " 255

sigh of pain escape her, her mother-in-law will cover
her mouth with her hand, but mostly the woman will
gag herself with her long black hair, she will not
disgrace herself by a cry as long as her senses are
with her. It is all very well to say the Chinese do
not suffer as white women suffer. They are not
like the sturdy negro women who have lived a
primitive, open-air life, walk like queens, and have
exercised every muscle. They are the crippled
products of an effete civilisation, who spend long
hours on the k'ang, and go as little as possible from
their own compound. To those women that German
girl will be a blessing untold. I think of their bodies
while she labours for their souls. Anyway she is
surely sent by God.

There were two men here to make up the comple-
ment, one was my missionary's husband, a man who
takes the Bible for his guide in everything, the Bible
as it is translated into the English tongue. He does
not read primarily for the beauty of the language, for
the rhythm, for the poetry, for the Eastern glamour
that is over all. He reads it, he would tell you
himself, for the truth. It is to him the most impor-
tant thing in the world ; he quotes it, he lives by it,
it is never out of his thoughts, he might be a Cove-
nanter of old Puritan days. And the fourth mission-
ary is a man of the world. I don't think he realises
it himself, but he is. He had lived there many
years, had married a wife and brought up children
there, and now had sent them home to be educated,
and he himself talked, not of the Bible, though I
doubt not he is just as keen as the other, but of
the people, and their manner of life, and their
customs, of the country, and of the strangers he had

256 A WOMAN IN CHINA

met, the changes he had seen, and, when I questioned
him, of the escape of himself and his family from the
Boxers.

For the souls and bodies of these wretched, miser-
able, uncomprehending Chinese, who very likely,
at the bottom of their hearts, pity the strangers
because they were not born in the Flowery Land,
these devoted people work — work and pray— day and
night. The result is not great.

" They will not hear the truth. Their eyes are
blind. They worship idols," they told me of the
majority. But they give kindliness, and in all
probability, for it is seldom that faithful, honest
kindliness fails in its purpose, they make a greater
impression than they or I realise.

True they believe firmly in the old Hebrew idea
of a " jealous God," but they themselves are more
tender than the God they preach. For all of them,
it seemed to me, life is hard, unless they have
greater joy in the service than I , " a Greek " could
understand, but for the older woman it must be
hardest of all.

" My yoke is easy, My burden is light," said the
Master she followed, but the burden of this woman,
away up in the mountains of Northern China, is by
no means light. The community is so small, they
do not belong to the China Inland Mission but call
themselves "The Brethren," the nearest white man
is two days away hard travelling across the moun-
tains, so that perforce the life is lonely. Day in
and day out they must live here for seven years
among an alien people ; a people who come to them
for aid and yet despise them. And because they
would put no more stumbling-blocks in the way of

"TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 257

bringing the Chinese to listen to the message they
bring, these missionaries conform, as much as they
can, to Chinese custom. Very seldom does this
woman walk abroad with her husband — it would not
be the thing — women and men do not walk together
in China. If she goes outside the missionary com-
pound she must be accompanied by another woman,
and she puts on some loose coat, because the
Chinese would be shocked at any suggestion of the
outline of a figure. Also she looks neither to
the right nor the left, and does not appear to notice
anything, because a well-behaved woman in China
never looks about her. She considers, too, very
carefully her goings, she would not walk through
the town at the hour when the men are going about
their business, the hour that I found the most
interesting, and invariably chose, no boy may bring
her tea to her bedroom — it would not be right — and
she has none of the arrogance of the higher race
who think what they do must be right and expect
the natives of the land to fall into line. No, she
conforms, always conforms to the uncomfortable
customs of the Chinese, and when any man above
the rank of the poorest comes to call upon her
husband, she and the girl are hustled out of the way
and are as invisible as if he kept a harem. It often
occurred to me that the Chinese thought he did.
Even in the church the women are screened off from
the men, and if a man adheres to the customs of the
country so closely in everything they can see, it is
natural to suppose they will give him credit for
adhering to them in all things. But they must
think, at least, he has selected his womenkind with
a view to their welfare^ for the older woman has had

258 A WOMAN IN CHINA

a little medical training, and simple cases of sickness
she can deal with, while the German girl, as I have
said, is a certified midwife. The other man too,
though not a doctor, has some little knowledge of
the more simple eye diseases.

And they are grateful, the poor Chinese, for the
sympathy they get from these kindly missionaries,
who openly say they tend their poor bodies because
they feel that so only can they get at their souls. They
come to the little dispensary in crowds, come twenty
miles over the mountains, and they bring there the
diseases of a slum people, coughs and colds, pleurisy
and pneumonia, internal complaints and the diseases
of filth — here in the clean mountains — itch and the
like. Many have bad eyes, many granulated lids.,
and there is many a case of hideous goitre. While
I was there a man, old and poor, tramped one
hundred miles across the mountains ; he was blind,
with frightfully granulated lids, and he had heard of
the skill of the missionaries. There are also well-
to-do people here, who sometimes seek aid from
them, though as a rule, it is the lower class they
come in contact with.

But the ailments of the rich are different. I
remember my missionary woman was called in to see
a girl about twenty, the daughter of a high-class
Manchu. The girl had hiccough. It came on regu-
larly about four o'clock every afternoon, and con-
tinued, if I remember rightly, three or four hours.
She was well and strong, she had everything the
heart of a Chinese woman could desire, she was
never required to do one stroke of work, but she
was not married. The Manchus have fallen on evil
times and find some difficulty in marrying their

"TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 259

daughters. So this girl, the daughter of well-to-do
people, was necessary to no one, not even to herself,
and the missionary, finding she spent the greater
part of her time lying idly upon the k'ang, diag-
nosed hysteria, and prescribed a good brisk walk
every day. The proud Manchu, who was her
mother, looked at the woman she had called in to
help her, scornfully.

"My daughter," she said drawing herself up to
her full height, and the Manchus are tall women,
" cannot walk in the streets. It would not be
seemly."

The missionary looked at her a little troubled.

" At least," she said^ " she can walk in the court-
yard and play with her brother's children."

But the girl looked at her with weary eyes. There
was no excitement in playing with her brother's
children, and she could not see the good to be got
out of walking aimlessly round the courtyard. Poor
Manchu maid ! What had she expected ?

" If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing,
wouldst thou not have done it? "

" I could do no good," said the missionary sorrow-
fully, " and they would not listen to my message."

The Chinese have their own remedies for many
diseases, and some of them the missionaries told me
were good, but many were too drastic, and many
were wickedly dangerous. When an eye is red and
bloodshot for instance, they will break a piece of
crockery and pierce the eye with it, and in all prob-
ability the unfortunate loses his sight. No wonder
they come miles and miles, however rough the way,
to submit themselves to gentler treatment. I have
known even women with bound feet toil twenty miles

260 A WOMAN IN CHINA

to see them about some ailment. Of course their
feet are not as badly bound as some, for there are
many women in China who cannot walk at all. I
talked with a man once who told me he had just been
called upon to congratulate a man because he had
married a wife who could not get across the room
by herself. She, naturally, was a lady with slaves
to wait upon her. These Chinese women of the
mountains of the poorer classes — the Manchus do not
bind their feet — must be able to move about a little,
for there is a certain amount of work they must do.

" A hundred thousand medical missionaries," said
this man, " are wanted in China, for the teeming
population suffers from its ignorance, it suffers
because it is packed so tightly together; the women
suffer from the custom that presses so heavily, and
it suffers from its own dirt."

Up here at Jehol the suffering is apparently as
bad as anywhere, and the dispensary is full with
all the minor ailments that come within the range
of the missionaries' simple skill, and all the cruel
diseases that are quite beyond them, that they can-
not touch, and they do their best in all pity and love,
and yet think that they are doing a greater thing
than binding up a man's wounds when they can
induce him to come to their prayer-meetings, which
go along, side by side, with the dispensary.

I, a heathen and a "Greek," question whether
the Chinese ever receives Christianity. A Chinese
gentleman, a graduate of Cambridge, once told me
he did not think he ever did.

" But the Chinaman," said he, he actually used the
contemned word, *"' is a practical man, he receives
all faiths. Some may be right, and when he thinks

..

TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS " 261

he is dying, he will send for a priest of every faith
he knows of to help him across the dark river. Who
knows, some of them may chance to be right," and
he laughed. He himself was of the faith so many of
us of this modern world have attained to, seeing the
good in so many faiths, seeing the beauty and the
pity of them and standing aside and crying : " Why
all this? Whither are we bound? What can it
matter whether this poor coolie believes in Christ,
or Buddha, or the cold ethics of Confucius?" I
said this to my missionary woman one day and she
looked at me with horror in her eyes.

" There will be a reaping some day," she said.
" Where will you be then?"

" Surely I cannot be blamed for using the reason-
ing powers God has given." But I am sure she
thought my reasoning powers came from the devil,
and if I hadn't been getting used to it I should have
been made uncomfortable by being prayed for as
one in outer darkness.

It is the worship of the ancestors that holds the
Chinese, the man who gives up that, gives up all
family ties and becomes practically an outcast.
There may be a few genuine Christians, but in
proportion to the money spent upon their conver-
sion, their number must be very small. I saw the
colporteur come into the compound one day, and
they told me he was an earnest Christian. He
might be, but again that doubt arose in my mind.
If the receiving of Christianity ensures a livelihood,
could you expect one of a nation, who will be made
a eunuch for the same reason, to reject it.

The missionaries had a hard time when first they
came here. The place is inhabited by Manchus,

262 A WOMAN IN CHINA

full of the pride of race, and they do not want the
outsider. They use them, as they have effected a
settlement, but they do not approve of their being
there.

As I and my saintly missionary walked down the
street, she carefully avoiding a glance either to the
right or the left, a little half-naked child ;at his
mother's side looked at her and cried aloud :

:' Ta, ta," and he said it vehemently again and
again.

She stopped, spoke to the mother, and evidently
remonstrated, and the woman laughed and passed
along on her high Manchu shoes without correcting
the child.

She looked troubled. "What did he say?" I
asked.

" Strike, strike ! or some people might say ' kill,
kill ! ' I said to the woman : ' What bad manners is
this?'

And the woman had only laughed! After all her
kindness and tenderness, all her consideration and
care ; I should have thought the very children
would have worshipped the ground she walked
upon.

They are holding their own, they say. In the
compound are a couple of Chinese women, the wives
of their teachers or servants, and they have had to
unbind their feet, a process almost as painful as the
binding. One old woman could not unbind hers,
they told me, because so long had they been bound
the feet split when she attempted to walk upon them
unbound, but so true a Christian is she, she puts her
tiny feet inside big shoes. But to balance her, their
amah, a Manchu, is still a heathen. After the

MANCHU WOMAN AND CHILD IN MISSIONARY COMPOUND.

MANCHU AND CHINESE WOMEN IN MISSIONARY COMPOUND.

<TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 268

years, the years they had been striving there, they
could not find one who has embraced their faith to
wait upon them.

In truth it was a hard faith, morning, noon, and
night, they prayed, morning, noon, and night, it
seemed to me from the little meeting-house went
up the sound of hymns and prayers, not even in
Christian England, England that has held the faith
for over a thousand years would so many services
have been attended, could they expect it of the
Chinese ?

In the evening, when the night fell, we sat in the
compound and talked, I, who was cold and reason-
able, and they who were enthusiasts, for to them had
come the call, that mysterious crying for the un-
known that comes to all peoples and all classes, and
is called by such different names.

" I have given myself to the Lord for China."
And outside the house the watchman beat his gong,
not to frighten off thieves, as I at first thought, but
to keep away the devils who help the " stealer man,"
for he cannot alone carry out his nefarious designs,
the wonks, the scavenger dogs made the night
hideous by their howling, and the soldiers, of whom
the town was full, sang their new war-song — wild
and barbaric.

" I do not like it," said she of the sad eyes and
red lips, " I do not like it. It does not sound

true."

And I, who had not got to live there, did not like
it either, but it was because it did sound to me true
— it sounded fierce and merciless. What might not
men, who sang like that, do?

" The Chinese soldier is a baby," said a Chinese

264 A WOMAN IN CHINA

to me, but that is when he is among his own particu-
lar people at home.

" Chinese soldiers," said another man, a foreigner,
"are always robbers and banditti."

And there is truth in that last statement, possibly
there is truth in both, for children, unguided and
unbridled, with the strength and passions of men,
are dangerous to let loose upon a community.

We are beginning to look upon China as a land
at peace. We talk about her " bloodless revolu-
tion," yet even as I write these words I see, sitting
opposite to me, my friend who was one of the rescue-
party, the gallant nine, who rode post-haste to Hsi
An Fu to rescue the missionaries cut off by the tide
of the revolution, and I know the peace of China is
not as the peace of a Western land.

Hsi An Fu is situated in Shensi, roughly, about
a fortnight's journey from the nearest railway, with
walls that rival those of Peking, and like Peking,
with a Manchu City walled off inside those walls.
There on the 22nd October, 1911, the Revolution-
aries, the apostles of progress, shut fast the gates of
the inner city and butchered the Manchus within the
walls. From house to house they went, and slew
them all, old women on the brink of the grave and
the tiny infant smiling in its mother's arms. Not
one was spared. No cries for mercy were listened
to. "Kill, kill!" was the cry that bright autumn
Sunday ; men, women, and children were slain, the
streets ran with their blood, the reek of slaughter
went up to heaven, and the Manchus were exter-
minated.

The movement was not anti-foreign, but the plight
of the missionaries well illustrates the danger every

..

TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS " 265

foreigner faces in China. The bulk of the people
are peaceful. Nowhere in the world, I suppose, is
a more peaceful person to be found than the average
Chinese peasant. He asks only to be let alone, but,
unfortunately, he is not let alone. His rulers
" squeeze " and oppress him, bands of robbers take
toll of his pittance, and when an unpaid soldiery is
let loose upon him, his plight is pitiable. It is
certainly understandable, if not pardonable, that he
in his turn, takes to pillage, and pillage leads to
murder. He is only a puppet in the hands of others.
One man alone may be kindly enough but the man
who is one of a mob, is swayed by the passions of that
mob, or the passions of its leader. So it was at Hsi
An Fu. Party feeling ran high. There were really
three parties, the Manchus, the Revolutionaries, and
the Secret Society, the Elder Brother Society, who
are always anti-foreign and who, here in Hsi An
Fu, for whatever purpose they might originally have
banded themselves together, were virtually a band
of robbers, mainly intent on filling their own pockets.
The Revolutionaries declared that the foreigners
should be protected, but — and again the menace of
China to the white man is felt — in the rush and
tumult of the battle, many of their followers did not
realise this. This was the time to wreak private
vengeance, and it was fiercely taken advantage of.
When thousands of helpless people, closer akin to
the slayers than the foreigners, were being given
pitilessly to the sword, who was likely to take much
account of a handful of missionaries.

There was outside the city in the south suburb a
small school for the teaching of the Swedish mission-
aries' children, and the head of that school had,

266 A WOMAN IN CHINA

some little time before, had a camera stolen. He
reported it to the police, and being dissatisfied with
the lax way the man at the head of the district took
the matter up, went to his superior officer. Now
in these disturbed times, the man who had " lost face "
saw his way to vengeance, and, being in sympathy
with the Revolutionaries, and knowing the exact
hour of the outbreak, he ordered the villagers round
the south suburb, every family, to send at least one
man to help exterminate the foreigners. " It was
an order," and the villagers responded. The school
was the first place attacked, for not only did this
man seek vengeance, but the humble possessions of
the missionaries seemed to the poorer Chinese to be
wealth well worth looting. Therefore that Sunday
at midnight a mob attacked the school premises.
The missionaries, Mr and Mrs Beckman and Mr
Watne, the tutor, were helpless before the crowd,
and hid in a tool-house, but they were discovered
and ran out, making for a high wall that surrounded
the compound. Mr Watne got astride of this and
handed over Mr Beckman's eldest daughter, a tall
girl of twelve, but, before he could get the other
children, the crowd rushed them, and he was tumbled
over the wall, making his escape with the girl to
another village some way off while the mob swept
over the rest, scattering them far and wide. Mr
Beckman, a particularly tall, stalwart man, con-
siderably over six feet high, had his youngest child,
a baby, in his arms, and the people gave way before
him, closing in on the unfortunates who were
following. It is impossible for an outsider to tell
the tale of that massacre, for massacre it was, the
people falling upon and doing to death the unfor-

"TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 267

tunate woman and the children who were clustering
round her. The darkness was filled with the fierce
shouts of the murderers, and every now and again
they were broken in upon by the terrified wail of a
child butchered with none to help.

" Ta, ta," cried the people, and they struck merci-
lessly, with spades and reaping hooks and knives,
the weak and helpless, and dodged out of the way
of the great, strong man who could fight a little for
his life and the lives of those dear to him.

The woman and the children were slain and at last
he was hunted, with the little girl still in his arms,
into a deep pond of water outside the suburb. The
mite was only three years old, and the distracted
father, wild with anxiety for his wife and other
children, had to soothe the little one and exhort her
to be quiet and not to cry, for the pursuers were
lighting fires round the pond to find them. They
lighted three, and the fires probably defeated their
own end, for the fugitive managed to keep out of the
glare, and the leaping flames deepened the darkness
around. The baby sheltered in her father's arms, and
in spite of the cold, never even whimpered, and the
water was so deep the mob dared not venture in.
Only a man of extraordinary height could have so
saved himself. Hour after hour of the bitter cold
autumn night passed and the mob dispersed a little.
The lust for killing was not so great in the keen Hours
of the early morning. Then the first silver streaks,
heralding the rising of the moon, appeared in the
eastern sky and the distracted man made his way
softly to a bank at one side, and reaching up, again
only a tall man could have done it, laid his little
girl there. But the child who had been so good in

268 A WOMAN IN CHINA

the icy water while she was against his breast began
to fret when the keen morning air blew through her
sodden clothes and she could not feel her father's
arms round her, and he had to take her back and
soothe her. But at last he persuaded her to lie still
till he got softly out of the water, and crept round to
her. He was not followed, the pursuit was slacken-
ing more and more, and, keeping in the shadows, he
made his way to the missionaries in the western
suburb. He thought that all but he and his little
girl had perished, and sad to say they did not know
of the two who were sheltering in a village some miles
away in the country. Here, nearly twelve hours
later, the pursuers sought them out and stoned them
to death.

Meanwhile rumours of what was happening in
the southern suburb reached the missionaries in the
eastern suburb, and they, taking counsel with their
native helpers, divided themselves into three parties,
and set out to take refuge in some more distant
villages where the people were reputed Christians.
They had gone but a little way, when the carts of
two of the parties were overtaken by a mob, who
handled them somewhat roughly, took all their
humble possessions, and drove them back.

" Kill, kill ! " cried the pointing people, as the little
helpless company, escorted by the shouting, threaten-
ing mob passed, and even those who did not directly
threaten, seemed to have no hope.

' They go to their deaths," they said, looking at
them curiously as men look upon other men about
to die.

The missionaries themselves had small hope of
their lives. When they reached the first mission-

"TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 269

house they were roughly thrust into a room and there
guarded, and they only wondered why death did not
come swiftly and cut short the agony of waiting.

The third party that set out from that suburb con-
sisted of the Rev. Donald Smith, his wife, and some
schoolgirls they were escorting back to their homes,
as he considered, in these troublous times, they
would be safer with their own people than in the
mission school. They went due east, and had not
gone three miles when they were set upon. The
girls fled in all directions, but the attackers only
molested the foreigner and his wife. He en-
deavoured to defend her, but they beat him so
severely that both his arms were broken, and they
were both left for dead by the wayside. Here they
were found by some friendly, kindly villagers — the
average Chinaman is kindly — who, when the roughs
were gone, came to their rescue, and took them back
to the eastern suburb, where the other missionaries
had spent a terrible two hours, momentarily expect-
ing the mob to rush in and kill them.

But the Chinese are a cautious people, curious in
their respect for precedent. What was to be done
with these foreigners. Sometimes the foreigners had
been slain, but then again, quite as often, they had
been guarded and kept safely. There was no get-
ting into the city. The gates were fast locked and
were kept shut for days, but someone — very probably
a well-wisher to the missionaries — went to the wall
and shouted up to know what was the order about
foreigners? Were they to kill them or were they to
protect them? Back came the response, the order
was, the foreigners were to be protected, and when
word of this was brought back to the mission station,

270 A WOMAN IN CHINA

they were not only released, but the property of which
they had been robbed was returned to them. For
those who had looted kept it intact till they saw
which way the wind blew.

And by the time the city gates were opened and
order was restored, it was understood, by the procla-
mation of the New Republic, that all foreigners were
to be protected.

But the case of the missionaries in Hsi An Fu
graphically illustrates the dangers every foreigner,
missionary, or the missionary's bete noire, the ubi-
quitous cigarette-selling British American Tobacco
man, runs in China, where the civilisation, the
long-established civilisation is that of Nineveh or
Babylon, or ancient Egypt. Not that the foreigner
runs any greater risk than the native of the country,
sometimes he runs less, because, even into the far
interior, a glimmering of the vengeance the Christian
nations take for their martyred brothers has pene-
trated ; but life in China is, as it was in Nineveh or
Babylon, not nearly as sacred as it is in the West.
The life of a poor man, one of the luckless proletariat,
is of small account to anyone. A disbanded and un-
paid soldiery are for ever a menace, and the difference
between the disciplined soldier and the unlicensed
bandit is very, very small. One week a regiment of
soldiers clamouring for their pay, the next a band of
robbers hiding in the hills, their methods ruthless, for
their hand is against every man's and every man's
hand is agamst them. They live by the sword, as
they perish by the sword, and when the tide of law-
lessness reaches a certain height, white man and
yellow alike suffer, but we take count only of the
sufferings of our own people.

"TO THE GREEKS, FOOLISHNESS" 271

Sitting in the missionary compound up at Jehol in
the evening, I thought of these things and looked
into the eyes that looked into mine, the kind, brown
eyes, and I wondered did she remember, did she think
of them, too. I looked again, and I knew she
remembered, that ever with her was the thought how
cut off they were from the rest of the world, and I
read there, though she never murmured, fear. For
Jehol has its traditions of sacrifice and martyrdom
too. Only six miles away at a village on the Lanho,
in the year of the Boxer trouble, they had slowly
buried the Catholic priest alive. All the long hot
summer's day they had kept him tied to a post, slowly,
to prolong his agony, heaping up the earth around
him. The day was hot, and he begged for water as
the long, weary, hopeless hours dragged themselves
away. And some of them had loved him.

;' You might," said a man looking on, " give him a
drink, even if you do kill him."

And they turned on him even as men might have
done in the days of the Inquisition :

" If you say any more, we will bury you beside
him."

And so he died a cruel death, a martyr, for there
was none to help, and when the Western nations
exacted retribution, they made the people put up a
cross, the symbol of his faith, over the grave. And
then, because they had been forced to do it, every
villager who passed that monument to show his con-
tempt for the foreigner and all his works cast a stone,
till now shape and inscription have both gone, and
the passer-by cannot tell what is that rough rock,
jagged and unshapely.

Yet here among these selfsame people, four and a

272 A WOMAN IN CHINA

half days' hard journey from Peking, far beyond all
hope of help from the foreign soldiery, dwell these
Christian missionaries. ' To the Greeks, foolish-
ness." But could they better demonstrate the
strength of their faith ?

CHAPTER XV

A VISIT TO THE TARTAR GENERAL

Hsiung Hsi Ling, Premier of China — Preparations for a call —
A cart of State— An elderly mule — Waiting in the gate— The
yamen — Mr Wu, the secretary — "Hallo, Missus!" — The
power of a Chinese General—'4 Plenty robber, too much
war "—Ceremonial farewell— A cultivated gentleman — Back
to past ages for the night.

UP in Jehol they called the General commanding
the three thousand odd troops the Tartar General,
why I do not know, but it seems it is the title by which
he is commonly known among the country people.
He was Hsiung Hsi Ling, the man who is now
Premier of China, and to him I brought letters of
introduction so that I might be admitted to the
Imperial Palace and Park and be treated as a person
of consequence, otherwise I imagine a foreigner and
a woman at that would have but small chance of
respect in China. The Chinese letters lifted me to
the rank of the literati, which must have been rather
surprising to the Chinese, and these in English were
such that I felt I must bear myself so as to live up to
them.

The yamen was about five minutes' walk from the
mission station, and in my ignorance I had thought
I would stroll up some morning when I had recovered
from the fatigues of the journey, but the missionaries,

373 s

274 A WOMAN IN CHINA

steeped in the lore of Chinese etiquette, declared
such a proceeding was not suitable. A person of
consequence, such as my letters proclaimed me,
must bear herself more becomingly.

" Write and ask if ten o'clock on Tuesday morn-
ing will be a suitable time for you to call on the
General, and send your letters by your servant. 1
dare say there will be somebody who can read them,
though I am sure there will be nobody who can write
an answer," said the missionary. " The General's
English-speaking secretary is away."

Accordingly I sent off Tuan, who was more than
sure that he was equal to the task, and he returned
without a letter, as the missionary had prophesied,
but saying : " She say all right."

"And now you must have a cart," said that
missionary who was more worldly wise than I ex-
pected an enthusiast to be, " and don't get down till
the yamen gates are opened. It would never do to
wait with the servants in the gate."

How Eastern it sounded ! And then his wife came
and superintended my toilet. The weather was
warm, not to say hot, and I had thought a black and
white muslin a most fitting and suitable array. But
she was horrified at the effect. It was made in the
mode of 1913, and did not suggest, as the long
Manchu robes do, that I was built like a pyramid,
broadest at the base.

" Haven't you got a coat to put over you," said she
looking round, and she seized my burberry which
was the only thing in the shape of a wrap I had with
me. Chinese ideas of propriety evidently influenced
her very strongly.

I declined to wear a burberry on a hot day late in

THE TARTAR GENERAL 275

May, though all the Chinese Empire were shocked
and horrified at my impropriety, but I sought round
and found a lace veil which, draped over me, was a
little suggestive of a bridal festivity, but apparently
satisfied all conditions, and then I went out to mount
into that abomination — a Peking cart. The Peking
cart that is used for visiting has a little trestle carried
over the back end of the shafts, which is taken down
when the occupant wishes to mount and dismount,
so I got into the seat of honour, the most uncomfort-
able seat well under the tilt, and Tuan, glorious in
a long black silk brocade robe, his queue newly oiled
and plaited, and a big straw hat upon his head,
climbed on to the tail of the shaft, and the carter,
dressed in the ordinary blue of his class, with the
ordinary rag over his head to keep off the dust,
walked beside the most venerable white mule I have
ever come across. I don't know whether aged
animals are held in respect in China, I'm afraid not.
The poor old thing had great deep hollows over his
eyes. I suspect Tuan had got him cheap, because
the cart was respectable, and he had been good
once — of course he would never have let me lose
face — and then he made me pay full price, a whole
fivepence I think it came to.

" That's a very old mule, Tuan," I said.

:' Yes," he assented, " very old, she forty," which
was certainly more than I had reckoned him. I
afterwards came to the conclusion he meant fourteen.

What Tuan was there for, 1 certainly don't know,
except to carry my card-case, which I was perfectly
capable of carrying myself.

We went out into the dusty, mud-coloured street,
and along between mud-coloured walls of the

276 A WOMAN IN CHINA

dullest, most uninteresting description, and presently
we arrived at the yamen gates, and here it was
evident that Tuan, who had been so important all
across the mountains, was now quite out of his depth.
" Cart no can go," said he. " Missie get out."
I was prepared for that. " No," I said very im-
portant for once in my life, " I wait till someone

comes."

The yamen entrance was divided into three, as all
Chinese entrances seem to be, and over it were
curved tiled roofs with a little colouring, faded and
shabby, about them ; all of it was badly in need of
repair, and on the fast-closed gates in the middle
were representations of some demon apparently in a
fit, but his aspect was a little spoiled by the want
of a fresh coat of paint. The two little gates at
either side were open, and here clustered Chinese
soldiers in khaki, and men in civilian dress of blue
cotton, and all stared at the foreign woman who was
not a missionary, in the cart; that is the rude ones
stared, and the polite ones looked uncomfortably
out of the corners of their eyes. A Chinaman's
politeness in this respect always ends by making me
uncomfortable. A good, downright stare that says
openly: " I am taking you in with all my eyes," I
can stand, but the man who looks away and down
and out of the corners of his eyes gets on my nerves
in no time.

However, this time I had not long to wait. After
a minute or two out came a messenger, a Chinese of
the better class, for he was dressed in a bright blue
silk coat and petticoats, with a black sleeveless jacket
over it, and the gates at his command, to my boy's
immense astonishment, opened, and my cart rumbled

THE TARTAR GENERAL 277

into the first courtyard. We went on into a second —
bare, ugly courtyards they were, without a flower or
a tree or any green thing to rest the eye upon — and
then I got down as there came to meet me a small
bare-headed man without a queue, and his thick
black hair apparently cut with a saw and done with
a fork. He wore an ill-fitting suit of foreign clothes,
and about his neck, instead of a collar, one of those
knitted wraps an Englishwoman puts inside her coat
when the weather is cold. On his feet were the white
socks and heelless slippers of the Chinese. Instead
of the dignified greeting the first man had given me
he remarked genially, and offhandedly: "Hallo,
Missus ! " and he did it with a certain confidence, as
if he really would show the numerous bystanders
that he knew how to receive a lady.

Through one shabby courtyard after another, all
guarded by soldiers in khaki, he led me to the
presence of the Tartar General, Hsiung Hsi Ling,
the great man who had been Minister of Finance
and who now held military command over the whole
of that part of China, independent even of the Viceroy
of the Province of Chihli. Those who told me made
a great point of that independence ; but in China it
seems that a General with troops at his command
always is independent, not only of the Viceroy of
the Province in which he is stationed, but of anyone
else in authority. The President himself would
treat him with great respect so long as he had troops
at his back. He is, in fact, entirely independent.
If the central authorities give him money to pay his
troops, well and good, he holds himself at their com-
mand, if they do not, then he is quite likely to
sympathise with his men, and become not only a

278 A WOMAN IN CHINA

danger to the community among whom he is
stationed, but to the Government as well. It is
hardly likely yet in China, that a General popular
with his troops can be degraded or dismissed. He
can only be got rid of by offering him something
better.

Here I found none of the pomp and magnificence
I had expected to find about an all-powerful Oriental.
We went into a room floored with stone, after the
Chinese fashion, and furnished with a couple of
chairs, and through that into a plain, smallish room,
with the usual window of dainty lattice-work covered
with white paper. All down the centre of it ran a
table like a great dining-table, covered, as if to
emphasise the likeness, with a white cloth. I felt as
if I had come in at an inopportune moment, before
the table had been cleared away. Seated at this
table, with his back to the window, was the General.
He rose as I entered and came forward, kindly and
considerately, to meet me — a man of middle height,
younger than I expected, for he hardly looked forty.
There was not a thread of white in his coal-black
hair, but he had some hair on his face — a moustache
and the scanty beard that is all the Chinese can
produce — so he was evidently of ripe years, well past
middle age. He wore a uniform of khaki, as simple
and devoid of ornament as that of one of his own
soldiers ; his thick black hair was cut short and he
had a clever, kindly face. Though he could under-
stand no English, he looked at the foreign woman
pleasantly, and as if he were glad to see her. He
went back to his chair, and I was seated at his right
hand, while his secretary, and very inadequate inter-
preter, sat on his left. An attendant, looking like

THE TARTAR GENERAL 279

an ordinary coolie, brought in tea in three cups with
handles and saucers, foreign fashion, and the inter-
view began.

I have been told that a grave and unsmiling
demeanour is the proper thing to bring to a Chinese
interview ; and if so I failed lamentably to come up
to the correct standard. But since the interpreter
knew even less English than Tuan, whom I had left
outside, there was really little else to do but smile
and look pleasant. My host certainly smiled many
times. I complimented him on the beauty of his
country and then I asked permission, that is to say
his protection, to go on to Lamamiao, or as it is
called on the maps, Dolnor. Goodness knows why
I asked. It would have meant two or three weeks
at least in that awful Peking cart, but I appear to
be so constituted that, when I am within range of a
place, it would seem like missing my opportunities
not to try and get there. I don't know what there
is to see at Dolnor, but it is up on the Mongolian
plateau, and there is a big lamaserie there and a
living Buddha, that is an incarnation of the Buddha.
The one who is there at present may be very holy
as to one part of him, but the earthly part requires
plenty of drink, I am told, and the caresses of many
women to make this world tolerable. However, I
was not to see him. The General and his secretary
might not have understood much, but they did under-
stand what I wanted then, and they were emphatic
that I could not go. The General looked at his
secretary and then at me, and explained at length,
and he must have thought that the English language
was remarkable for its brevity, for I was curtly
informed :

280 A WOMAN IN CHINA

"No can go. Plenty robber. Too much war."

I had been threatened with robbers before, but not
by an important General, and this time I felt I had
better take heed, besides there was always the con-
solatory thought that, if I did not go, I need not
ride any more in a Peking cart. Then I asked per-
mission to visit the Palace and Park.

" No can do one time," said the interpreter.
" How many day you want go ? "

Somehow, though I had come all this way to see
it, I have a rooted objection to sightseeing. To get
a ticket to go into a place takes away the charm;
still as I was about it, I thought I would go as often
as I could, so I said I would like to go on five days.
The missionaries, though they had been here for
six years, had never yet set foot inside that Park;
to go required a permit from the authorities, and it
was their idea to ask nothing from those authorities
that they could possibly avoid. They would cer-
tainly have thought it wicked to ask for anything for
their own pleasure. I did not suffer from any such
ideas. As the General was bent on being civil to
me I thought I might as well say I would like to take
my friends in, and as we could not go without proper
attendants — I who come from a country where I
have blacked my own boots, cooked the family
dinner, and ironed my husband's shirts many a time
— I asked for and got about thirty tickets. I've got
some of them still. Then I drank a cup of very
excellent tea, and before five minutes were up rose
and made my adieux. Brevity, I had been instructed,
was the soul of courtesy in a Chinese interview.

The Tartar General saw me through two doors,
which I believe was a high honour, and due to my

PAVILIONS ON BRIDGE ACROSS LAKE, JEHOL.

A BOATHOUSE IN THE PARK.

THE TARTAR GENERAL 281

having been introduced as a learned doctor. The
correct thing is to protest all the while and beg your
host not to come any farther, but I am really too
Western in my ideas and it seems silly. Either he
wants to come, or he doesn't, in any case what does
it matter, and so I fear me, I was not vehement
enough in my protestations of unworthiness. The
secretary conducted me to my cart, where a subdued
and awed servant awaited my arrival with a new and
exalted idea of his Missie's importance. Tuan had
magnified my importance, I fancy, for his own sake.
He was serving a woman — yes, but she was a rich,
generous, and important woman, but he had never,
at the bottom of his heart, really dreamt that she
could go through the yamen gate in a cart, that
she could sit down beside the Tartar General, that she
could get many tickets to go inside grounds forbidden
to all the Chinese round about. I have not the
slightest doubt all the details of the interview reached
him before I came out, brief as my visit had been,
and he helped me into my cart with, I felt, more
deference and less make-believe than was usual. It
made me smile a little to myself, but I think it was
Tuan who really got most satisfaction out of that
visit, though he had not seen the great man.

I had been comparing China to Babylon. I came
away from the General's presence with the feeling
that a Babylonish gentleman was truly charming —
just like a finished product of my own time.
Probably he was. But there were other sides to
Babylon, as I was reminded that night. It is well
to know all sides. When I had said good night and
gone to bed, there burst on my ears a loud beating
of gongs, and the weird war-song I had found so

282 A WOMAN IN CHINA

haunting the night before. The soldiers were
stimulating their courage for the fighting in
Mongolia. I wonder if the Babylonish soldiery sang
so before they marched down upon Jerusalem.
Then there came the watchman's gong, and the howl
of the wonks that prowled about the town. I was back
in past ages, and as I lay there in the darkness I
wondered how I had ever had the temerity even to
contemplate a visit to Lamamiao, and whether I
would ever have the courage necessary to get back
to Peking by myself. Luckily the fears of the dark
are generally dispersed by the morning sunlight. At
least they are with me, or I should never dare go
travelling in remote places at all.

CHAPTER XVI

A PLEASURE-GROUND OF THE MANCHUS

A return call — Ceremonies — A dog-robbing suit— Difficulties of
conversation — A treat for the amah — The British Ambassador
at Jehol in the eighteenth century — The last stages of
decrepitude — Glories of the park — The bronze temple — A
flippant young Chinese gentleman — " Ladies' Temple " —
Desolation and dirt and ruin — " Happiness Hall " — Exam-
ining a barbarian.

THE next day the secretary returned my call, bring-
ing with him the General's card, and an apology for
not coming himself. He was so very busy. I never
expected him to come, and don't suppose he ever
really intended to, but it was true Chinese politeness
to put it that way.

Mr Wu had sent to say he was coming to call upon
me, and it surprised me to see the commotion such a
little thing occasioned in the mission house. I felt
they were really being awfully good to my guest, but,
without taking away one jot from their kindliness, I
think, too, they were very glad to be brought into
friendly relations with the yamen, and I was very
glad indeed to think that I, who was in outer darkness
from their point of view, was able to do this little thing
for them. Cakes were made, the best tea got out,
the table set, and the boy, who generally waited upon
us humbler folk in a little short jacket and trousers
caught in at the ankles, was put into the long coat,

283

284 A WOMAN IN CHINA

or petticoat, whichever you are pleased to call it,
that a well-dressed Chinese servant always wears.
It seems it is not the correct thing for him to wait
upon one in a little short jacket. And then when
all was ready, and the small great man was
announced, to my surprise the other two women
were hustled out of sight, and I and the missionary
received him alone. Why, I do not know even now.
I sat on a high chair, and so did Mr Wu, and the
missionary gave us both tea and cakes, handing every-
thing with both hands; that I believe is the correct
Chinese way of doing honour to your guest. I
received it as a matter of course, said " Thank you,"
or " Please don't bother/' whichever occurred to me,
but Mr Wu was loud in his protestations, in both
Chinese and English, and I fancy the whole inter-
view— unless I spoiled it — was conducted in a manner
which reflected infinite credit upon the missionary's
knowledge of Chinese customs and the secretary's
best manners. They certainly were very elaborate.
This day he had on what one of my naval brothers
was wont to designate a dog-robbing suit, though I
don't know that he ever went out dog-robbing, and
I am quite sure the young Chinese gentleman never
did, also his hair was neatly parted in the middle
and plastered down on each side, and with a high
collar and tie on, he looked really as uncomfortable
and outre as it was possible to look. He had brought
me the tickets, and implored me if I wanted anything
else to ask for it. The interview was a trial to me.
It is all very well to be prepared to smile, but smiles
don't really fill up more than a minute or two, and
what on earth to say during the rest of the time,
troubled me. In all the wide world, and I felt it

LAKE IN PARK, JEHOL.

END OF LAKE IN PARK, JEHOL.

MANCHUS' PLEASURE-GROUND 285

acutely, we had absolutely nothing in common save
those tickets, and my heart sank when he told me he
would do himself the honour of showing me over the
palace himself. If I felt half an hour with him, for
all my gratitude for his kindliness, an intolerable
burden, what on earth should I feel the livelong day.
One piece of news he did tell us, there Ead been
fighting in Mongolia, severe fighting, and many men
had been killed, but when we came to ask which side
had won he said he did not know, and then of course
we guessed the Chinese had suffered a reverse, for
if the telegraph could tell any details at all, it was
sure to have told the all-important one which side
was the conqueror. At last, when it seemed that
hour had been interminable, the young man rose, and
the farewells began.

Those Chinese farewells! Chinese etiquette is
enough to cure the most enthusiastic believer in form
and ceremony, to reduce him to the belief that a
simple statement of fact, a " Yea, yea," and " Nay,
nay," are amply sufficient. I suppose all this form
and ceremony, this useless form and ceremony, comes
from the over-civilisation of China. If ever in the
future I am inclined to cavil at abrupt modern
manners, I shall think of that young man protesting
that the missionary must not come to the gate with
him, when all the while he knew he would have
been deeply offended if he had not. I fear lest I
may now swing over to the other side and say that a
rude abruptness is a sign of life, so much better does
it seem to me than the long elaborate and meaning-
less politeness that hampers one so much.

When he had gone we discussed the question of a
visit to the Imperial Park, and then I found that

286 A WOMAN IN CHINA

there were many things in the way of my entertaining
my hosts, prayer meetings, dispensary afternoons,
visits, and that in any case, only the women would
accompany me, whether that was really because the
men were busy, or because it was not Chinese
etiquette for men and women to amuse themselves
together I do not know, but I strongly suspect the
latter had something to do with it. For of course what
the foreigners did, more especially the new foreign
woman, who was not a missionary, was a matter of
common talk in all the district round. Then my
hostess put it to me, as I had plenty of tickets and
to spare, would I take their amah. She was most
anxious to go. She had been in service with a
Manchu family, and once when they were going she
had been ill, and once it had rained so that she had
never gone, and she was getting an old woman and
feared her chances were dwindling sadly.

It was such a little thing to want, and yet I don't
know. When I looked at the hideous town, for
Cheng Teh Fu remains in my mind as the ugliest
Chinese town I have ever seen it had not the charm
and fascination that walls give, when I thought of
the delights that lay hidden behind the fifteen miles
of high wall that surround the Park, the delights that
are for so very, very few, I did not wonder that the
Manchu woman, who already counted herself old, she
was forty-five, should have been very anxious to
go inside. And when I told her I would take her,
she immediately begged leave to go away and put
on her best clothes. I couldn't see any difference
between her best clothes and her everyday clothes,
but I could see she had a small shaven grandchild
in attendance, who was immediately put on to carry

MANCHUS' PLEASURE-GROUND 287

my umbrella. I suppose she hoped to smuggle him
in to see the delights, and I said nothing, for I had
plenty of tickets.

Curiously enough, while most of China has been
a sealed book, the Hunting Palace — it is really better
described as a Lodge — of the Manchus has been
known to the English for one hundred and twenty
years, for it was here that, on the Qth September,
1793, the Emperor Ch'ien Lung received Lord Ma-
cartney, the first British Ambassador to China. I did
not come straight from Peking, but I know that the
road, by valley and mountain pass, is reckoned very
bad indeed, and very few people as yet take the
trouble to go to Jehol. It is four and a half days'
hard travelling now, but Lord Macartney took seven,
and it is a curious commentary upon the state of the
roads in the British Isles in those days that though
his chronicler, Sir George Staunton, writing of the
journey, complains a little of the roads, and mentions
that Lord Macartney's carriage, which he had brought
out from England with him, had generally to be
dragged along empty, while the " Embassador " him-
self rode in a palankeen, he does not make much
moan about them ; no one reading his account would
think they were so appalling as they must have been,
for I cannot think they have deteriorated much since
those days. When I looked at the streets of Cheng
Teh Fu, banks, dust heaps, great holes, stones, I
tried to imagine the British " Embassador's " coach
being dragged across them, twisting round corners,
balancing on sidings, up to the axles in dust, or
perhaps mud, for it was September and the crowd
looking on at the lord from the far islands of the sea,
who was bringing tribute to the Emperor of China,

288 A WOMAN IN CHINA

for I am afraid it is hardly likely they believed he
was doing anything else.

Another thing Sir George Staunton notes is the
scarcity of timber. " The circumjacent hills," he
writes, " appeared to have been once well planted
with trees; but those few which remained were
stunted, and timber has become very scarce. No
young plantations had been made to supply the old
ones cut down." Now the hills round are absolutely
bare, there is not a sign that ever a tree has grown
upon them, and I should not have believed they had,
had it not been for Sir George Staunton's account.

And on the other side of this ugly town, among
these desolate hills, is set a wall, a wall about twenty
feet high, with a broad pathway on the top, along
which the guards might walk. And the wall has been
built with discretion. Not only was it to keep out all
but the elect, but it was to block effectually all view
of what went on inside. Not even from the neigh-
bouring hills is it possible to look into that Park. Its
delights were only for the Son of Heaven and those
who ministered to his well-being.

We went along a sordid, dusty street to the
principal gate, a shabby and forlorn-looking gate, and
the watch-tower over it was crumbling to decay, and
we entered the courtyard, a forlorn and desolate
courtyard, where the paving-stones were broken, and
the grass and weeds were coming up between the
cracks. Then there was a long pathway with a
broken pavement in the middle, a pavement so
characteristic of China that wherever I chance to see
such I shall think of her golden sunshine and bright
skies. On either side of that pathway were high
walls over which were peeping the tiled roofs of

LAKE IN PARK, JEHOL.

EMPEROR'S BEDROOM.

MANCHUS' PLEASURE-GROUND 289

buildings, until at last after fully five minutes' walk,
after passing through many gates, all in various
stages of decay, we came to a place where the path
ended with two doors to the right and left. This,
the palace of an Emperor; it seemed impossible to
believe it. I wondered if the woman who had wanted
for so many years to see it was disappointed. She
was supporting my elbow, true Chinese fashion, and
Tuan, having succeeded in passing on my camera to
the usual ragged follower, was on the other side, as
if I were in the last stages of decrepitude. At first
this exceeding attention used to irritate me, but by
this time I had resigned myself to my fate. I was
more concerned at the shabbiness and sordidness of
everything. Of course no one save the servants,
who keep the place, live in the grounds now, no
one has lived there for over fifty years, not since 1 860,
when tKe reigning Emperor fled there from the Allies
who sacked Peking, and died there. Perhaps it was
for that reason that his secondary wife, the great
Dowager- Empress whom all the world knew, disliked
the place, and went there no more. I remembered
that, as I stood between those two doors and wondered
which I should go through first. The one to the left
led to some courtyards surrounded by low, one-
storied buildings — Emperor's first bedroom — said
Tuan, and possibly he was right. I turned to the
door on the right and as it opened I knew that these
Manchu pleasure-grounds had been planned, as so
many things Chinese are planned, nobly. I stepped
out on to a plateau and there, there in this treeless
China, was a grove of firs and pines. The blue sky
peeped through the branches, the sunshine dappled
the ground with shadow and light, and the wind

T

290 A WOMAN IN CHINA

murmured softly among the evergreen foliage. Here
was coolness and delight. Beyond the plateau lay a
long grassy valley surrounded by softly rounded, tree-
clad hills, and right at the bottom of the valley was a
lake with winding shores, a lake covered with lotus
lilies, with islands on it, with bridges and buildings,
picturesque as only the ideal Chinese buildings can
be picturesque. It may have been created by art,
and at least art must have entered to some great
extent into the making of the beauty, but there is
no trace of it. My followers looked at the scene
and looked at me, as much as to say this was some-
thing belonging to them they were showing me, and
they hoped I was appreciating it properly. It might
have been the Manchu woman's very own. In truth
I could only look and wonder, lost in admiration.
What could the heart of man want more for the
glorious summertime, the brief, hot summer of
Northern China?

The first glance was a surprise, and the farther I
went in the more my wonder grew. There were
paved pathways, but they were not aggressively
paved, the rough grey stones had just been sunk in
the grass. They were broken a little now, and they
toned naturally with the rural surroundings. There
were lovely bridges bridging ravines, and here, too,
was not one stone too many, nothing to suggest the
artificial, that so often spoils the rural scene made to
conform to the wants of the luxurious. Of course,
besides the pavement, other things had fallen into
disrepair, there were steps down hill-sides that were
well-nigh hopeless for purposes of ascent and descent,
and there were temples where indeed the gods were
forlorn and forgotten. Gigantic gods they were

MANCHUS' PLEASURE-GROUND 291

with fearsome faces and painted in gorgeous colours,
but they were all dusty and dirty. There was one
temple all of bronze, but it was rusted and shabby.
There were shrines in it set with agate and jasper,
mother-of-pearl and jade, and what looked like great
rubies, but, very likely, were only garnets. Shabby,
forlorn, forgotten was the temple, the steps that led
up to it were broken and almost unusable, the court-
yards were neglected, the tiles of the roof grass-
grown, the woodwork of the doors perished, the walls
falling, but the situation on the hill-side, embosomed
in pines, with the beautiful lake at its feet and the
wide vista of hills beyond, was superb, eternal.

On the day the missionaries arranged to come
we made a picnic to this temple, I, and the two
missionary women and our attendants, my servant,
and their boy and the Manchu amah and all the
heterogeneous following my boy always collected,
and as we sat there at our open-air tiffin the gates were
pushed open and in came the little Chinese gentle-
man in his badly fitting foreign clothes.

"Hallo, Missus/' he said, and I forgot for a
moment all the wonders that his people had done,
that were here before my eyes.

He had come to fulfil his promise and show me
round.

He was a flippant young gentleman impatient of
the past, just as I have seen young men of his age,
in Western lands. He was only a boy, after all,
and he threw stones at the birds just as a youngei
boy might have done in England. Only I wished
he wouldn't. It was nice to think the birds had
sanctuary here, but I suppose it was a way of letting
off steam, since he could not talk very easily to the

292 A WOMAN IN CHINA

foreign woman. A small red squirrel, sitting up
deeply engaged with a nut from one of the fir-trees,
roused him to wild excitement, and he shouted and
yelled to a couple of dignified, petticoated Chinamen
on the other side of the lake, in a way that quite
upset my ideas of Chinese propriety ; in fact, he was
the General's secretary, showing off just as I have
seen boys in other lands show off.

He took us to the women's temple, since we were
interested in temples, a temple away on the other
side of the lake, down in a hollow of the hills, hidden
away as woman has been hidden away in China for
immemorial ages.

" Ladies' temple," said our cicerone with a wave
of his hand.

And it, too, is falling into decay, the dusty gods,
ranged round the sacred place, remind one of the
contents of a lumber-room, and " Forgotten, for-
gotten," is written large all over it. The forlorn old
man in shabby blue, with a tiny little queue and
a dirty face who keeps it, looks as if he too had
been forgotten, and was grateful for a twenty-cent
cumskaw. Only the courtyard with the soft breeze
rustling in the pine-trees and ringing the musical
bells that hung from the eaves was peaceful in the
afternoon sunshine, with a charm of its own.

What women have come and prayed here? The
proud Manchu Empress whom her lord had
neglected, the Chinese concubine who longed to find
favour in his eyes ?

All over this pleasure-ground are buildings, but
so deftly placed they never for one moment interfere
with the charm of the countryside. There is a little
temple on the Golden Mountain where the Jehol

GOLDEN MOUNTAIN AND SOURCE OF JEHOL RIVER.

MR. WU AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE TEMPLE.

MANCHUS' PLEASURE-GROUND 293

River takes its rise in a spring ; on another hill is a
little look-out place or tea pagoda with the roof
covered with tiles of imperial yellow, and a view from
it that even an Emperor is lucky to command. At
the end of a long grassy glade where the deer were
feeding in the shade of oaks and willows was a tall
pagoda, and the Emperor's library was in another
little valley, hidden away behind high walls. We
entered through a guard-house and came upon a
small door in the high stone wall, and this door on
the inner side appeared to be blocked not only by the
trunk of a tree but by a huge rock. There was, how-
ever, just room for one person to pass round, and
then we entered a shaded rock garden, which is all
round the building that holds the library. The deep
veranda was charming, on the hottest day one might
sit, cool and secluded, reading here, and on each
corner are exquisite bronze models of Chinese ponies.
The library itself, like most of these houses, was
sealed up, and our young friend had not the key, but
the lattice-work windows, and most of the walls are
of lattice-work, for this is a summer palace, were
down to the ground, and through the torn paper I
could get a glimpse of what looked like another
lumber-room, but that once must have been gorgeous
with red lacquer and gold.

Always it was the same, desolation and dirt and
ruin, and the young man who was showing us every-
thing made as if he wished to impress upon us that
it did not matter. He belonged to the modern world,
and these were past and gone. But when we admired
and were charmed and delighted I saw that he, too,
was pleased.

There were the Emperor's rooms opening into a

294 A WOMAN IN CHINA

courtyard close to the gate, there were his great
audience halls down among a grove of firs, where
probably he received Lord Macartney. Highly
scented white single peonies made fragrant the grass-
grown courtyards, where great bronze gongs are the
remnants of a past magnificence, and the rooms are
many of them empty, for all they are so carefully
sealed. There were more rooms for the Emperor on
an island in the lily-covered lake ; and reached by
bridges that are taken up in June and July and boats
substituted, and farthest away of all, at the very end
of the lake, were the rooms of the Empress.

" Happiness Hall " the Emperor Kwang Hsi
wrote on it with his own hands, or so our guide told
us, and there to this day the golden characters remain.
Did they speak the truth, I wonder. At that
particular period, I believe, the Empress counted for
a great deal more than the Emperor, so possibly at
least the envious Emperor felt he was speaking the
truth; but, as a rule, it is difficult to think that the
woman who shared the Dragon Throne could have
been happy. It is difficult to believe that any woman
in China can be happy, she counts for so little even
now.

The courtyards were like all the other courtyards,
with great gongs of Ningpo work and bronze vases,
and shaded by picturesque pine-trees, only here was
an innovation. In a sheltered corner, hidden away
from the sight of all, by high walls and green shrubs,
was the bathing-place of the Court ladies, and on the
other side their theatre.

The Emperor had a theatre not far from the gate
of the pleasure-grounds, a great place all falling into
decay, and here they had a play for the entertainment

MANCHUS' PLEASURE-GROUND 295

of their guests, when the first British Ambassador
came here, and it is evident that the women were
allowed to be present, even though they were behind
a screen, for Sir George Staunton relates that the
only foreigner, seen by these secluded women, was
George Staunton aged thirteen, the page to the
Embassy, who was led on to a platform by a eunuch,
so that the wives and concubines of the Emperor
might see what a barbarian from the islands of the
far Western sea looked like.

But here, close to her rooms, and by her bathing-
place, the Empress had her own private theatre, and
I wondered what manner of play could interest such
secluded ladies, such narrow lives.

Wonderful to relate both the theatre and the roof
of the rooms showed signs of having been recently
done up. The rumour ran that after the Revolution
in February 1912, the Court thought of retiring here,
and these recent repairs in a place that has been
untouched for years give colour to the rumour. We
asked our guide as we sat at afternoon tea on the
veranda looking out at the sunlight coming through
the fir-trees that make the approach to " Happiness
Hall," but he shook his head. He knew nothing
about it. He was a most circumspect young man
and never did know anything, he felt perhaps it was
wisest not.

Oh but it was sad the waste here. All these
dwelling-places dotted about in the valley, on hill-
side, hidden away in groves of trees, are of one story,
they are summer palaces, but the rooms are well-
proportioned, and with their wide verandas and their
lattice-work walls down to the ground, must have
been delightful to live in, and they were furnished as

296 A WOMAN IN CHINA

an Emperor's palace should be furnished. There
were chairs unlike the usual Chinese chairs, comfort-
able chairs of red lacquer and blackwood, and they
were inlaid with cloisonne work, with carved jade,
with delightful patterns in mother-of-pearl, there were
stools, there were tables, there were low k'ang tables
of lacquer, and all were perished with the sun and
the wind ; of not one piece has any care been taken.
Some of the rooms were empty, some were full of
packing-cases hiding I know not what treasures;
judging by those perishing chairs and tables that
were left out, I should imagine something worth
possessing. Can it be only fifty years since an
Emperor came here, it might be two hundred judging
by the state of decay everything was in, and yet, when
all was said and done, this place struck me as being
the most magnificent pleasure-ground, the most
beautifully situated, the most beautifully planned,
that I have ever seen, worth, and more than worth,
the arduous journey through the mountains that I
had taken to see it.

It is supposed to be cut off from the people, and it
is I suppose, judging by the joy the mission servants
expressed at getting a chance to see it.

"All my life," said the amah, " I have served in
Manchu families, and yet see, it is through a foreigner
I come here," and it was as if the seeing had crowned
her life. But still there is a little dribbling in of the
favoured few of the lower classes. It may be they
were the palace servants who speared great black
bass in the lake. It might have been they who
carried out baskets of lily root and sold them with
the fish outside. I bought bass easily enough for
my hostess, great things still alive and bleeding from

WOMEN S TEMPLE, JEHOL.

HAPPINESS HALL.

MANCHUS' PLEASURE-GROUND 297

the spear-point. Sometimes there are rumours of
art treasures sold from the palace, and then again it
is contradicted : but I wondered, as I looked at those
great baskets of lily roots that were constantly going
outside, if here were not an excellent way to conceal
contraband. It may be though that the guards at the
gate are not to be bought, and possibly I do them an
injustice.

I had written this and felt apologetic for my sus-
picions of the humble guard, forgetting that this is
China, where anything may happen, when before my
book could go to press a greater than the guard, no
less a person than the Premier himself, Hsiung Hsi
Ling, the great Tartar General, was accused of
taking away the precious curios from Jehol. He
had brought away curios valued at tens of thousands
of pounds but he succeeded in proving to the satisfac-
tion of the President that he had brought them away
only that they might be stored in one of the great
museums in Peking, where not only could they be
cared for, but they might be seen by far more people.
Again I thought of the Babylonish gentleman.
Doubtless he, too, would have moved the nation's
treasures from one place to another without saying
by your leave to any man. To whom was he
responsible? Perhaps to the King upon the
throne. Hardly to him, if his army was strong and
faithful.

We lingered on the veranda of the Empress's
house over our afternoon tea — wherever we went
hot water was procurable — and the sunshine came
through the branches of the pines and firs, the great
willows dipped their weeping branches in the clear
waters of the lake, the deep blue of the sky contrasted

298 A WOMAN IN CHINA

with the green of the pine-needles, and a long snake
came slowly, slowly, through the grass to take his
daily drink, unperturbed, though all the servants and
the German girl and I ran to look at him. He knew
he was quite safe, no one would harm a sacred snake.
A small eagle screamed from the rocks above, there
was the mourning of a dove, the plaintive cry of a
hoopoe, and a chattering black and white magpie
looked on. A tiny blue kingfisher, like a jewel,
fluttered on to a stone, and a bird something like a
thrush, sang sweetly and loudly as the evening
shadows lengthened. A great blue crane, tall almost
as a man flew slowly across the water, and the brown
deer clustered in the glades and began to feed.
Truly it was an ideal spot up among the barren hills
of Inner Mongolia, this Park enclosed by miles of
high wall and still carefully guarded and jealously
secluded by the Republic as it was by the Manchus.
When France became a Republic they threw open
her palaces and desecrated her most holy places.
Not so here in the unchanging East. What was
secluded and difficult of entrance in Manchu times
is secluded and entered only by favour still. China
absorbs the present and clings to the past. Are they
past for ever those dead and gone rulers who made
these pleasure-grounds ?

Their last representative is a little boy hidden away
in the heart of Peking, hardly realising yet what he
has lost.

" If he comes again," said a Chinese gentleman,
" he will be Emperor by force of arms."

Will the power come back to him ? I can no more
believe that the Chinese will become a modern nation,
forgetting these glories of their past, than could the

PAVILIONS ON LAKE, JEHOL.

(Sec page

WOMEN'S BATHING PLACE.

(See page 294)

MANCHUS' PLEASURE-GROUND 299

prophet believe that the Lord would leave His chosen
people in captivity.

" I will bring again the captivity of my people of
Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and
inhabit them ; and they shall plant vineyards, and
drink the wine thereof ; they shall also make gardens
and eat the fruit of them.

" And I will plant them upon their land, and they
shall no more be pulled out of their land, which I
have given them, saith the Lord thy God."

And we from the mission wended our way back
through the dusty, dirty, commonplace streets, and
the little gentleman who had been our guide, much
to his relief, I am sure, for he spoke little English,
and he would not speak Chinese, turned off at the
yamen.

CHAPTER XVII

THE VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS

Legend of the birth of Ch'ien Lung — A valley of temples — Wells —
A temple fair — Hawking — Suicide's rock — Five hundred and
eight Buddhas — The Po-Ta-La — Supercilious elephants —
Steep steps — Airless temple — The persevering frog — Bright-
roofed Temple— Tea at the Temple of the great Buddha— The
Yuan T'iing — Ming Temple outside Peking.

As we walked in the Manchu Park the amah told us
a story, a legend, and the missionary translated it
to me. It took a long while to tell, first she slipped
on the rocky steps and we had to wait till she re-
covered, then the General's secretary joined us, and
finally, when we were safe back at the missionary
compound, she had to wait till we got by ourselves,
because she thought it was improper !

And this was the story the amah told as we walked
beneath the fir-trees.

Once upon a time in the valley of Jehol there was
born a little girl who did not speak till she was three
years old, then she opened her lips, looked at her
grandfather, and called him by name. And her
grandfather died. She did not speak again for a
long time, but the next person she called by name
also died and consternation reigned in the family.
Her father and mother died, whether because she
spoke to them the amah did not know, but she was
left penniless and at last a farmer took compassion

300

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 801

upon the girl, now just growing into womanhood,
and told her she might have charge of the ducks, on
condition she did not speak. So for her began a
lonely, silent life among the mountains, herding the
ducks.

One night as the dusk was falling and the duck
pond and the hills beyond were wrapped in a mysteri-
ous haze that hid and glorified everything, there came
along an old man riding a donkey and asked her the
way to the Hunting Palace of the Manchus that was
somewhere among these hills and valleys. He had
lost his way, he said, and wanted to get back there.
The girl looked at him with mournful eyes and shook
her head without saying a word.

" What is your name ? " cried the old man.

She turned away silently.

" I must find my way," he added, and she took up
a stick and gathered her ducks together.

" But I am the Emperor," said he, " and I must get
back. What manner of girl are you who will not
speak to the Emperor? "

And she looked at him more gravely than ever
out of her dark eyes, and drove off her ducks, taking
no more notice of the greatest ruler in the world than
if he had been a common coolie. So the Emperor
found his own way to his Hunting Palace, and that
night he dreamed a dream, a vivid dream, that an
ancestor had come to him and told him he must
marry a strange and mysterious woman.

But the women who came to the ruler of the earth
were not strange and mysterious, they were ordinary
and commonplace even though he had his choice of
the women of his Empire. He brooded over the
matter and came to the conclusion that the strange

302 A WOMAN IN CHINA

and mysterious woman must be the girl he had met
herding ducks in the dusk of the evening. Then he
sent out to the part of the country where he had
wandered that night and demanded the daughters
of the farmer.

The good man was highly honoured and dressed
his girls in their finest clothes to appear before their
Emperor, but, and they must have been bitterly
disappointed, though they were pretty girls^ there
was nothing strange about them, they were as
ordinary as all the other women who occupied the
women's quarters. He had seen many, many, like
them. Again he sent back to the farm and they said
there were no other women there but the girl who
herded the ducks, and it could not be she because
she spoke to no one.

"That," said the Emperor, "is the girl," and he
ordered her to be properly arrayed and brought
before him at once,

Alas for the glamour that comes with the dusk of
the evening. The girl had grown up without any
comeliness and when she was brought before the
Emperor he turned away disgusted. Nevertheless,
for his dream's sake, he married her and gave her a
fine house to live in, but he had nothing to do with
her, she was his wife only in name.

And the duck-herd girl, come to high estate,
pined because she did not find favour in the sight of
her lord, she never ceased to pray for his smiles, and
at last she so worked upon him that one night he
did send for her. She was his wife^ her shame had
gone from her. And presently, it was rumoured
that the duck-herd girl was to become a mother.
But the Emperor was angry, he could not believe

LAMASERIE.

( See page 308)

m

CARTS AT THE FAIR.
(See page 305)

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 808

the child was his, and he turned her out to wander,
desolate and forlorn, upon the hills. At first she
despaired, but presently she took courage, had she
not been raised from a duck-herd to an Emperor's
wife, and was she not to bear his son, and by her
faith in herself she persuaded some shepherds who
tended their sheep upon the other side of the valley
from the wall that surrounded the Emperor's
pleasure-grounds to take her in, and here her son
was born.

And that night the Emperor dreamed another
dream. He dreamed that a most illustrious son had
been born to him that very night. He sent to make
inquiries and the only one of his wives or concubines
who had borne a son that night, was the woman he
had driven from him with contumely. So he took
her back with honour, and his dream — both his
dreams were fulfilled, for the son that was born to
him that night among the hills was the illustrious
Ch'ien Lung, the man who at eighty-three still sat
upon the Dragon Throne when George III. of
England sent Lord Macartney on an embassy to
China in 1793.

And Ch'ien Lung was a good son to his mother
at least, and because she was a pious woman, and
he was born amidst those sheltering hills, he built
there a series of temples to the glory of God and for
her pleasure.

I was bound to go and see those temples, indeed
I think the man or woman who went to Jehol and
did not make a point of going up that valley must
lack something.

The drawback for me was that I had to go in a
Peking cart, and even though those temples were

804 A WOMAN IN CHINA

built by an Emperor I had no reason to suppose that
the road that led to them was any better than the
ordinary Chinese roads. It wasn't, but I don't know
that it was worse. Tuan engaged the old white
mule of venerable years, and I think that was an
advantage, he went so slowly that often I was able
to walk. I did not propose to visit all of them, there
is a family likeness between all Chinese temples,
whatever be the name of the deity to whom they are
dedicated, and seeing too many I should miss the
beauty of all.

It was a gorgeous June morning the day I set out,
sitting as far forward as I could in the cart with Tuan
on the tail of the shaft and the carter walking at the
mule's head. All round one side of Cheng Teh Fu
is built up a high wall that the Chinese call a break-
water, and a breakwater I believe it is indeed after
the summer rains, though then, the Jehol River ran
just a shallow trickle at its foot. There were many
little vegetable gardens along here, the ground most
carefully cultivated and showing not a weed, not a
stray blade of grass. " The garden of every peasant
contained a well for watering it," writes Sir George
Staunton in 1793, "and the buckets for drawing
up the water were made of ozier twigs wattled or
plaited, of so close a texture as to hold any fluid."
He might have been writing of the peasants of to-
day. As I passed, with those selfsame buckets were
they watering their gardens.

The people were streaming out of the town, most
of them on foot, but there were a few fat men and
small-footed women on donkeys, and one or two of
the richer people, I noticed by the women's dresses
they were mostly Manchus, had blossomed out into

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 305

Peking carts. For there was a fair at one of the
temples, a very minor temple ; and a fair in China
seems to be much what it used to be in England,
say one hundred, or one hundred and fifty years ago.
It attracts all the country people for miles round.
Here they were all clad in blue, save the lamas,
who were in bright yellow and dingy red. There
were the people who came to worship, followed by
the people who came to trade, who must make
money out of them, men buying, selling, begging,
men and women clad in neat blue cotton, and in
the dingiest, dirtiest rags, men gathering the
droppings of the mules and donkeys, and — how it
made me think of the historical novels I used to love
to read in the days when novels fascinated me —
gentlemen with hooded hawks upon their wrists.
All of them wended their way along this road, this
beautiful road, this very, very bad road, and I went
along with them, the woman who was not a
missionary, who was travelling by herself, and who,
consequently, was an object of interest to all, far
outrivalling the fair, in attraction. It was a scene
peculiarly Chinese, and it will be many a long year
before I forget it.

On the left-hand side rose a steep ridge well
wooded for China, and on the very top of the ridge
ran the encircling wall that shut out all but the
favoured few from the pleasure-grounds of the
Manchu Sovereigns. Six weeks before, up among
these mountains of Inner Mongolia, all the trees
were leafless, and on this day in June the leaves of
the poplars and aspens, acacias and oaks still re-
tained the delicate, dainty green of early spring, and
on the right were the steep, precipitous cliffs over-

U

806 A WOMAN IN CHINA

looking the town. One of these cliffs goes by the
sinister name of the " Suicide's Rock." The
Chinese, though we Westerners are accustomed to
regard them as impassive, are at bottom an emo-
tional people. They quarrel violently at times, and
one way of getting even with an enemy or a man
who has wronged them is to dare him to go over the
" Suicide's Rock." To my Western notions it is not
quite clear how the offender is scored off, for the
challenger must be prepared to accompany the
challenged on his dreadful leap. Yet they do it.
Three times in the six years the missionaries have
been here have a couple gone over the cliff, to be
dashed to pieces on the rocks below.

But that sinister cliff was soon passed, and turning
a little with the wall we went up a valley, and up
that valley for perhaps eight miles, embosomed
among the folds of the hills, hills for the most part
steep, rounded, and treeless, are the temples, red,
and gold, and white, against the green or brown
of the hills.

To the glory of God! Surely. Surely. An ideal
place for temples whoever placed them there, artist
or Emperor, holy man, or grateful son.

" Idols. Idols," say the missionaries at Jehol
sadly, those good, kindly folk, whose life seemed to
me an apology for living, a dedication of their whole
existence to the austere Deity they have set up.
But here I was among other gods.

" We go last first," said Tuan, and I approved.
There would be no fear of my missing something I
particularly wanted to see if they were all on my
homeward path.

"B-rrr! B-rrr! B-rrr!" cried my " cartee man"

i

W <D

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 807

encouraging his old mule, and as we went along the
road, up the valley, and everywhere in this treeless
land, the temples were embowered in groves of
trees, sometimes fir-trees, sometimes acacia or white
poplar, and always on the road we passed the blue-
clad people, and out of the carts peeped the Manchu
ladies with highly painted faces and flower-decked
hair, till at last we came to a halt under a couple of
leafy acacia-trees, by a bridge that had once been
planned on noble lines. And bridges are needed
here, for the missionaries told me that a very little
rain will put this road, that is axle-deep in dust, five
feet under water. But the bridge was broken, the
stones of the parapet were lying flat on one side ;
the stones that led up to it were gone altogether.
And as the bridge that led up to it so was the
temple.

Tuan, with some difficulty, made me understand
it was the Temple of the five hundred and eight
Buddhas, and as I went in, attended by a priest in
the last stages of dirt and shabbiness, I saw rows
upon rows of seated Buddhas greater than life-size,
covered with gold leaf that shone out bright in the
semi-darkness, with shaven heads and faces, sad and
impassive, gay, and laughing, and frowning. Dead
gods surely, for the roof is falling in, the hangings
are tatters, and the dust of years lies thick on floor,
on walls, on the Buddhas themselves. There was
a pot of sand before one golden figure rather larger
than the rest, and I burned incense there, bowing
myself in the House of Rimmon, because I do not
think that incense is often burned now before the
dead god.

They are all dead these gods in the temples

308 A WOMAN IN CHINA

builded by a pious Emperor for his pious mother.
The next I visited was a lamaserie, built in imitation
of the Po-Ta-La in Lhasa. It climbs up the steep
hill-side, story after story, with here and there on the
various stages a pine-tree, and the wind whispers
among its boughs that the Emperor who built and
adorned it is long since dead, the very dynasty has
passed away, and the gods are forgotten. For-
gotten indeed. I got out of my cart at the bottom
of the hill, and the gate opened to me, because the
General had sent to say that one day that week a
foreign woman was coming and she must have all
attention, else I judge I might have waited in vain
outside those doors. Inside is rather a gorgeous
p'ia lou, flanked on either side by a couple of
elephants. I cannot think the man who sculptured
them could ever have seen an elephant, he must
have done it from description, but he has contrived
to put on those beasts such a very supercilious
expression it made me smile just to look at them.

From that p'ia lou the monastery rises. Never
in my life before have I seen such an effect of sheer
steep high walls. I suppose it must be Tibetan, for
it is not Chinese as I know the Chinese. Stage
after stage it rose up, showing blank walls that once
were pinkish red, with square places like windows,
but they were not windows, they were evidently put
there to catch the eye and deepen the effect of
steepness. Stage after stage I climbed up steep and
narrow steps that were closed alongside the wall,
and Tuan, according to Chinese custom, supported
my elbow, as if it were hardly likely I should be
capable of taking another step. Also, according
to his custom, he had engaged a ragged follower to

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 309

carry my camera, and a half-naked little boy to bear
the burden of the umbrella. I don't suppose I
should have said anything under any circumstances,
China had taught me my limitations where my ser-
vants were concerned, but that day I was glad of
his aid, for this Tibetan temple meant to me steep
climbing. I have no use for stairs. Stage after
stage we went, and on each platform the view be-
came wider, far down the valley I could see, and
the hills rose range after range, softly rounded,
rugged, fantastic, till they faded away in the far blue
distance. I had thought the Nine Dragon Temple
wonderful, but now I knew that those men of the
Ming era who had built it had never dreamed of
the glories of these mountains of Inner Mongolia.
I was weary before I came to the last pine-tree, but
still there was a great walled, flat- topped building
towering far above me, its walls the faded pinkish
red, on the edge of its far-away roof a gleam of gold.
The steps were so narrow, so steep, and so
rugged, that if I had not been sure that never in
my life should I come there again I should have
declined to go up them, but I did go up, and at the
top we came to a door, a door in the high blind wall
that admitted us to a great courtyard with high walls
towering all round it and a temple, one of the many
temples in this building, in the centre. The temple
was crowded with all manner of beautiful things,
vases of cloisonne, figures overlaid with gold leaf,
hangings of cut silk, the chair of the Dalai Lama in
gold and carved lacquer-work, the mule-saddle used
by the Emperor Ch'ien Lung, lanterns, incense
burners, shrines, all heaped together in what seemed
to me the wildest confusion, and everything was

810 A WOMAN IN CHINA

more than touched with the finger of decay. All
the rich, red lacquer was perished, much of the china
and earthenware was broken, the hangings were
rotted and torn and ragged, the paint was peeling
from stonework and wood, the copper and brass was
green with rust. Ichabod! Ichabod! The gods
are dead, the great Emperor is but a name.

It was oppressive in there too, for the blank walls
towered up four sides square, the bright blue sky
was above and the sun was shining beyond, but the
mountain breezes for at least one hundred and fifty
years have not been able to get in here, and it was
hot, close, and airless. Once there were more steps
that led up to the very top of the wall, but they are
broken and dangerous now, crumbling to ruin, and
as far as I could make out from Tuan's imperfect
English no one has been up them for many a long
day. There was nothing to be done but to go away
from this airless temple and make my way down,
down to the platform where are its foundations, and
thence down, down, by the little plateaux where the
pine-trees grow, by the rough and broken paths to
the floor of the valley again.

Sightseeing always wearies me. I want to see
these places, I want to know what they are like, I
want to be in a position to talk about them to people
who have also been there — they are the people who
are most interested in one's doings — but the actual
doing of the sightseeing I always find burdensome.
Now having done so much I was tempted to go back
and say I had had enough, for the time being, at any
rate, but then I remembered I could not indefinitely
trespass upon the kindness of my hosts, I must go
soon, and I should never, never come back to this

TEMPLE AT THE TOP OF LAMASERIE.
(See page jog)

FARMHOUSE ABOVE THE MARBLE PRIEST.
(See page 376)

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 811

valley. Still I was desperately tired and sorely
tempted to give up, and then I remembered the two
frogs who fell into a pitcher of milk. I don't think
^Esop told the story, but he ought to have done so.
They swam round and round hopelessly, for there
was no possibility of getting out, and one said to
the other, " It's no good, we may as well give in.
It'll save trouble in the end," and he curled up his
legs and sank to the bottom of the milk and was
drowned. But the other frog was made of sterner
stuff.

" I think I'll just hustle round a bit," said he,
needless to say he was an American frog, "who
knows what may happen." So he swam round and
round, and sure enough when they looked into that
pitcher in the morning there he was sitting on a little
pat of butter!

I thought of that frog as I sat at the door of the
next temple we drove up to, and I, weary and tired
and a little cross, had to wait some time, for the priest
who had the keys was not there. Of course I had
sent no word that I was coming and it was unreason-
able of me to expect that the priest should wait from
dawn till dark for my arrival. With me waited a
little crowd of people, men, women, and children,
that gradually grew in numbers, and when the cus-
todian at last arrived it was evident they all intended
to take advantage of my presence and go in and see
the temple too. I had not the least objection,
neither, it seemed, had the priest. They were
holiday-makers from the fair, and they probably
gave him some small trifle. Tuan decided that we
should give eighty cents, roughly about one and
eightpence, or forty cents American money.

312 A WOMAN IN CHINA

And glad indeed was I that I had waited. Not
that the temple differed much inside the courtyard
and the sanctuary from the other temples I have
seen, all was the same ruin and desolation, only
after I had climbed up many steps, roughly made
of stones and earth, we came upon a platform from
which the roof was visible. The Emperor's Palace,
they call this, or the Bright-roofed Temple, and
truly it is well-named. Its roof, with dragons
running up all four corners, is of bronze covered
with gold, and gleams and glitters in the sunshine.
Solomon's Temple, in all its glory, could not have
been more wonderful, and as I tried to photograph
it, though no photograph can give any idea of its
beauty, some girls, Manchu by their head-dresses,
with flowers in their hair, giggled and pointed, and
evidently discussed me. I thought they would
come in well — a contrast to that gorgeous roof,
but a well-dressed Chinese — not in foreign clothes, I
imagine the General's secretary is the only man up
among these hills who could indulge in such
luxuries, drove them away and then came and apolo-
gised, through Tuan, for their behaviour. I said,
truly enough, that I did not mind in the least, but
he said, as far as I - could make out, that their
behaviour was unpardonable, so I am afraid they
hadn't admired me, which was unkind, considering
I had taken them in.

The next temple, a mass of golden brown and green
tiled roofs, looked loveliest of all in its setting,
against the hill-side. The roofs, broken and irregu-
lar, peeped out from among the firs and pines, and
there was a soft melody in the air as we approached,
for a wind, a gentle wind had arisen, and every bell

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 313

hanging at the corners of the many roofs was
chiming musically. I do not know any sweeter
sound than the sound of those temple bells as the
evening falls. This was an extensive place of many
courtyards, climbing up the hill like the lamaserie.
the Ta Fo Hu they call it or "Great Buddha
Temple," for in one of the temples, swept and
garnished better than any temples I had seen before,
was a colossal figure seventy feet high with many
arms outstretched and an eye in the palm of every
hand. It is surely a very debased Buddhism, but I
see the symbolism, the hand which bestows and the
eye which sees all things. But for all the beauty of
the symbolism it was ugly, as all the manifestations
of the Deity, as conceived by man, are apt to be.
The stone flooring was swept, but the gold is
falling from the central figure, the lacquer is
perished, the hangings are torn and dust-laden
beyond description, and the only things of any beauty
are walls which are covered with little niches in
which are seated tiny golden Buddhas, hundreds of
them. I wanted to buy one but the priests shook
their heads, and it would have been a shame to
despoil the temple. Even if they had said, " Yes,"
I don't know that I would have taken it.

There were many priests here, shaven-headed old
men and tiny children in brilliant yellow and purplish
red, but they were all as shabby and poverty-stricken
as the temple itself. I had tea on one of the many
platforms overlooking many roofs, and a young monk
made me a seat from the broken yellow tiles that
lay on the ground, and the little boy priests looked
so eagerly at the cakes I had brought with me — the
priests gave me tea— that I gave some to them and

314 A WOMAN IN CHINA

they gobbled them up like small boys all the world
over. Tuan pointed out to me some dark steps in
the wall. If I went up there I should reach the
Great Buddha's head; but I shook my head, not
even the recollection of the frog who gave up so
easily could have made me climb those steps. I
am not even sorry now that I didn't.

I was very tired by this time, and very thankful
that there was only one more temple to see. There
were really eight in all, but I was suffering from a
surfeit of temples, only I could not miss this one, for
every day when I went for a walk I could see its
glorious golden brown tiled roof amid the dark
green of the surrounding mountain pines. It was
unlike any Chinese roof I have seen, but it is one
of the temples of this valley. It is the Yuan T'ing,
a temple built by Ch'ien Lung, not for his mother
but for a Tibetan wife, after the style of her country,
that she might not feel so lonely in a strange land.

Its pinkish red arched walls and gateways seemed
quite close, but it was exceedingly difficult to get
at, particularly for a tired woman who, when she was
not jolting in a Peking cart, had been climbing up
more steps than even now she cares to think about.
And the temple, save for that roof, was much like
every other temple, a place of paved courtyards
with the grass and weeds growing up among the
stones, and grass and even young pine-trees growing
on the tiled roofs. The altars were shabby and de-
cayed, and when I climbed up till I was right under
the domed roof — and it was a steep climb — more than
once I was tempted to turn back and take it as read,
as they do long reports at meetings. I found the round
chamber was the roosting-place of many pigeons, all

BRIGHT-ROOFED TEMPLE.

CORNER OF BRIGHT-ROOFED TEMPLE.

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 815

the lacquer was perished, the bronze rusted, and
though the attendant opened many doors with many
keys, I know that the place is seldom visited, and
but for that vivid roof, it must be forgotten.

And yet the people like to look at these things.
There was not a crowd following me as there was
at the Bright-roofed Temple, but there was still the
ragged-looking coolie who was carrying my camera.
I suspected him of every filthy disease known in
China, and their name must be legion, any that had
by chance escaped him I thought might have found
asylum with the boy who bore my umbrella. I hoped
that rude health and an open-air life would enable
me to throw off any germs. These two, who had
had to walk where I had ridden, I pitied, so I told
Tuan to say they need not climb up as I had used
up all my plates and certainly had no use for an
umbrella.

" She say * No matter/ " said Tuan including them
both in the feminine, " She like to come," and I think
he liked it as well, for they escorted me with subdued
enthusiasm round that domed chamber inspecting
what must have been a reproduction of a debased
Buddhist hell in miniature. It was covered with dust,
faded, and weather-worn, like everything else in the
temple, but it afforded the four who were with me
great pleasure, and when with relief I saw a figure
instead of being bitten by a snake, or eaten by some
gruesome beast, or sawn asunder between two planks,
merely resting in a tree, Tuan explained with great
gusto and evident satisfaction : " Spikes in tree." He
took care I should lose none of the flavour of the
tortures. But even the tortures were faded and worn,
the dust had settled on them, the air and the sun

316 A WOMAN IN CHINA

had perished them, and I could not raise a
shudder. Dusty and unclean they spoiled for me
the beauty of the golden roof and the dark green
mountain pines. I was glad to go down the many
steps again, glad to go down to the courtyard where
the temple attendant, who might have been a priest,
but was dressed in blue cotton and had the shaven
head and queue that so many of the Manchus still
affect, gave me tea out of his tiny cups, seated on
the temple steps. A dirty old man he was, but his
tea was perfect, and I made up my mind not to look
whether the cups were clean, for his manners matched
his tea.

And then I went out on to the broad cleared space
in front, and feasted my eyes for the last time on the
golden brown tiled roof set amongst the green of
the pines, and clear-cut against the vivid blue of the
sky.

And yet it is not the beauty only that appeals,
there is something more than that, for even as I look
at those hills, I rememBer another temple I visited
just outside Peking, a little temple, and I went not
by myself but with a party of laughing young people.
There was nothing beautiful about this temple, the
walls were crumbled almost to dust, the roof was
falling in, upon the tiles the grasses were growing,
the green kaoliang crept up to the forsaken altars,
and the dust-laden wind of Northern China swept in
through the broken walls and caressed the forgotten
gods who still in their places look out serenely on
the world beyond.

I could not but remember Swinburne, " Laugh out
again for the gods are dead." Are they dead ? Does
anything die in China?

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 317

In the Ming Dynasty, some time in the fifteenth
century, when the Wars of the Roses were raging in
England they built this little temple, nearly three
hundred years before Ch'ien Lung built the temples
in the valley at Jehol, and they installed the gods
in all the glory of red lacquer and gold, and when
the last gold leaf had been laid on and the last
touches had been given to the dainty lacquer they
walked out and left it, left it to the soft, insidious
decay that comes to things forgotten. For it must
be remembered, whether we look at this valley of
dead gods or this little temple outside Peking, that
when a memorial is put up it is not expected to last
for ever, and no provision is made or expected for its
upkeep. If it last a year, well and good, so was the
man to whom it was put up, valued, and if it last a
hundred years — if five hundred years after it was
dedicated there still remains one stone standing upon
the other, how fragrant the memory of that man must
have been. It is five hundred years since this temple
was built and still it endures. Behind is the wall of
the city, grim and grey, but the gods do not look
upon the wall, their faces are turned to the south and
the gorgeous sunshine. They still sit in their places,
but the little figures that once adorned the chamber
are lying about on the ground or leaning up discon-
solately against the greater gods, and some of them
are broken. On the ground, in the dust, was a
colossal head with a face that reminded us that the
silken robes of Caesar's wife came from China, for
that head was never modelled from any Mongolian,
dead or alive. A Roman Emperor might have sat
for it. The faces that looked down on it, lying there
in the dust, were Eastern, there were the narrow

818 A WOMAN IN CHINA

eyes, the impassive features, the thin lips, but this,
this was European, this man had lived and loved,
desired and mourned, and, for there was just a touch
of scorn on the lips, when he had drained life to its
dregs, or renounced its joys, said with bitterness:
" All is vanity."

And the Chinese peasants came and looked at the
aliens having tiffin in the shade, and for them our
broken meats were a treat. One was crippled and
one was blind and one was covered with the sores of
smallpox, so hideous to look upon that the lady
amongst us who prided herself upon her good looks
turned shuddering away and implored that they be
driven off, before we all caught the terrible disease.

What could life possibly hold for these people?
Surely for them the gods are dead ?

I talked with an old woman, dirty and wrinkled,
with a bald head and maimed feet.

" She asks how old you are ? " translated the
young man beside me.

"Tell her I am sixty." I thought it would
sound more respectable.

" A-a-h ! " She looked at me a moment. " She
says," he went on translating, " that you have worn
better than she has, for she is sixty too. And have
you any sons ? "

For a moment I hesitated, but I was not going to
lose face, what would she think of a woman without
sons, so I laid my hand on his arm, and smiled to
indicate that he was my son.

" A-a-h ! " and she talked and smiled.

"What does she say?" He looked a little shy.
"Tell me."

"She says you are to be congratulated," and

YUAN T'lNG ROUND-ROOFED TIBETAN TEMPLE.

MING TEMPLE OUTSIDE PEKING.

VALLEY OF THE DEAD GODS 319

indeed he was a fine specimen of manhood. " She
says she has three sons."

And alas, alas, I had brought it on myself, for I
was not to be congratulated, I have no son, but I
was answered too. I have called the gods dead, but
they are not dead. What if the temple crumbles?
There is the cloudless sky and the growing green
around it. This woman was old, and grey, and
bent. The gods have given her three sons, and she
is content. This child had the smallpox, and by
and by when it shall have passed — Ah but that is
beyond me. What compensation can there be for
the scarred face and blinded eyes? Only if we
understood all things, perhaps the savour would be
gone from life. Behind all is the All Merciful, the
dead gods in the temples are but a manifestation of
the Great Power that is over all.

I thought of that little temple outside the walls of
Peking, and the old woman who congratulated me
on the son I had not as I stood taking my last look
at the Yuan T'ing. And then I looked again away
down the valley to the folds of the hills where the
other temples nestled, embowered in trees. Far
away I could see the sheer walls of the Po Ta La
climbing up the hill-side golden and red and white
with the evening sunlight falling upon them, and
making me feel that just so from this very spot at
this very hour they should be looked at, and then
I went down, a ten minutes' weary scramble, I
was very, very tired, to my cart and across the Jehol
River again, back to the missionary compound.

Never again shall I visit that valley of temples
that lies among the hills of Inner Mongolia, never
again, and though, of course, since the days of

820 A WOMAN IN CHINA

Marco Polo Europeans have visited it, it is so dis-
tant, so difficult to come at that they have not gone
in battalions. But those temples in the folds of the
hills are beautiful beyond dreaming, and though
their glory has gone, still in their decay, with the
eternal hills round and behind them, they form a
fitting memorial to the man who set them there to
the glory of God and for his humble mother's sake.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN A WUPAN

The difficulties of the laundry — A friend in need — A strange
picnic party — The authority of the parent — Travelling in a
mule litter — Rain — A frequented highway — Yellow oiled
paper — Restricted quarters — Dodging the smoke — " What a
lot you eat! " — Charm of the river — Modest Chinamen — The
best-beloved grandchild — The gorges of the Lanho — The
Wall again — Effect of rain on the Chinaman — The captain's
cash-box — A .gentleman of Babylon — Lanchou.

AND now it was time to bid farewell to my kind hosts
and start back to Peking. Thank goodness it was
going to be fairly easy. Instead of the abominable
cart I was going to float down the River Lan in a
wupan, a long, narrow, flat-bottomed boat.

First I sent my servant with my card to the Tartar
General to thank him for all his kindness. This
brought Mr Wu down again with the General's card
at the most awkward hour of course, in the middle of
tiffin, and Mr Wu, much to my surprise, was dignified
and even stately in full Chinese dress. He was all
grey and black. His petticoat or coat or whatever
it is called was down to his ankles and was of silk,
he wore a little sleeveless jacket, and his trousers
were tied in with neat black bands at his neat little
ankles. So nice did he look, such a contrast to the
commonplace little man I had seen before, that I
felt obliged to admire him openly. Besides, I am

321 x

822 A WOMAN IN CHINA

told that is quite in accordance with Chinese good
manners.

He received my compliments with a smile, and
then explained the reason of the change.

" Must send shirt, collar, Tientsin, be washed. I
very poor man, no more got."

And Tientsin was three or four days by river,
sometimes much more, as well as five hours by train !
I felt he had indeed done me an honour when he
had used up his available stock of linen in my enter-
taining, and to think I had only admired him when
he was in native dress !

Another Chinese gentleman came in that day and
was introduced to me. He contented himself with
Chinese dress, and he had more English, though it
was of a peculiar order.

" But I hate to hear people laugh at Mr Chung's
English," said the missionary who was a man of
the world. " He was a good friend to me and mine.
If it hadn't been for him, I doubt if I or my wife or
children would be here now."

It was the time of the Boxer trouble, and the
missionary was stationed at Pa Kou where Mr Chung
had charge of the telegraph station. The mission-
aries grew salads in their garden, which the head of
the telegraphs much appreciated, and even when he
felt it wiser not to be too closely in touch with the
foreigners, he still sent down a basket for a salad
occasionally. One day in the bottom of the basket
he put a letter. " The foreign warships are attack-
ing the Taku Forts," it ran, "better get away. I
am keeping back the news."

But the missionary could not get away. Up and
down the town he went, but he could get no carts.

IN A WUPAN 323

All the carters raised their prices to something that
was prohibitive, even though death faced them.
And then came the basket again for more salads and
in the bottom was another letter.

" The foreign ships have taken the Taku Forts,"
it said. " I am keeping back the news. Go away as
soon as possible."

And then the missionary spoke outright of his
dilemma, and Mr Chung went to the Prefect of the
town and enlisted him on their side. The carters
were sent for.

" You would not go," said the Prefect, " when this
man offered you a great sum of money," it sounded
quite Biblical as he told it. "Now you will go
for the ordinary charge or I will take off your
heads."

So two carts were got, and the missionary, his
wife, and children, and as much of their household
goods as they could take, were hustled into them,
and they started off for the nearest port.

" If ever I am in a hole again I hope I travel with
such women," said the missionary ; " they were as
cheerful as if it was a picnic-party."

All went well for a couple of days, and then one
day, passing through a town, a man came up and
addressed them, and said he was servant to some
Englishmen, a couple of mining engineers, who were
held up in this town, because they had heard there
was an ambush laid for all foreigners a little farther
down the road. And the missionaries had thought
they were the last foreigners left in the country !

They promptly sought out the Englishmen, who
confirmed the boy's story. It was not safe to go
farther. The little party decided to stick together,

824 A WOMAN IN CHINA

and finally the missionary went to the Prefect and
told him how the Prefect at Pa Kou had helped
them, and suggested it would be wise to do likewise,
especially as the foreigners were sure to win in the
end.

The Prefect considered the matter and finally
promised to help them, provided they put themselves
entirely in his hands and said nothing, no matter
what they heard. It seemed a desperate thing to do
to put themselves entirely in the hands of their
enemies, but it was the only chance, that chance or
Buckley's and Buckley, says the Australian proverb,
never had a chance. They agreed to the Prefect's
terms ; he set a guard of soldiers over them, and they
travelled surrounded by them. But at first they
were very doubtful whether they had been wise in
trusting a man who was to all intents and purposes
an open enemy.

" Where did you get them ? " asked the people of
the soldiers as they passed. And the soldiers
detailed at length their capture.

" And what are you going to do with them ? " And
the soldiers always said that, by the orders of the
Prefect of the town where they had been captured,
they were taking them on to be delivered over to the
proper authorities, who would know what to do with
them, doubtless the least that could happen would
be that they would have their heads taken off.

And the man who told me the story had lived
through such days as that. Had seen his wife and
children live through them!

But the Prefect was as good as his word, the
soldiers saw them through the danger-zone to safety.

" But if it had not been for Mr Chung in the first

IN A WUPAN 825

instance " says the missionary, and his gratitude

was in his voice.

And Mr Chung had his own troubles. He was
progressive and modern, not, I think, Christian, and
he had actually himself taught his daughters to
read. Also he had decided not to bind their feet.
And then, the pity of it — and the extraordinary
deference that is paid to elders in China — there came
orders from his parents in Canton — he must be a man
over forty — the daughters' feet were to be bound.

I was glad indeed to have heard the story of Mr
Chung before I set out on my journey.

The Lanho is seven miles, a two hours' journey
by mule litter or cart from Cheng Teh Fu, and I
decided to go by litter and send my things by cart,
for, not only did I object to a cart, but I thought I
would like to see what travelling by mule litter was
like. I am perfectly satisfied now — I don't ever
want to go by one again.

I had to get in at the missionary compound,
because it takes four men to lift a litter on to the
mules, and there was only one to attend to it. It was
early in the morning, only a little after six, but all the
missionaries walked about a mile of the way with me
— I felt it was exceedingly kind of them, because it
was the only time I ever saw men and women to-
gether outside the compound — then they bade me
good-bye, and I was fairly started on my journey.
I sat in my litter on a spring cushion, lent me for
the cart by a Chinese gentleman, and I endeavoured
to balance myself so that the litter should not — as
it seemed to me to be threatening to do — turn topsy-
turvy. It made me rather uncomfortable at first,
because once in there is no way of getting out with-

826 A WOMAN IN CHINA

out lifting the litter off the mules. You may indeed
slip down between it and the leading mule's hind
legs, but that proceeding strikes me as decidedly
risky, for a mule can kick and his temper does not
seem to be improved by having the shafts of a litter
on his back.

It was a cloudy morning and it threatened rain.
I had only seen one day's rain since I had been in
China. The scenery was wild and grand. We
went along by the Jehol River, on the edge of one
range of precipitous mountains, while the other, on
the other side of the river, towered above us. We
were going along the bottom of a valley, as is usual
in this part of the world, but as the Jehol is a flowing
river and takes up a good part of the bottom, we very
often went along a track that was cut out of the
mountain-side. The white mule in front with the
jingling bells and red tassels on his collar and head-
stall, always preferred the very edge, so that when I
looked out of the left-hand side of my litter, I looked
down a depth of about thirty or forty feet, as far as I
could guess, into the river-bed below. I found it
better not to look. Not that it was very deep or that
there was any likelihood of my going over. I am
fully convinced, in spite of the objurgations showered
upon him by the driver, that that white mule knew
his business thoroughly. Still it made me uncom-
fortable to feel so helpless.

And the way was very busy indeed, even thus
early in the morning. All sorts of folk were going
along it, there were heavy country carts drawn by
seven strong mules, they were taking grain to the
river to be shipped " inside the Wall," and the road
that they followed was abominable. Every now and

A RAFT OF RAILWAY SLEEPERS ON THE LANHO.

A MULE-LITTER, BY THE LANHO.

IN A WUPAN 827

again they would stick in the heavy sand or ruts, or
stones of the roadway — everything that should not
be in a road, according to our ideas, was there — and
the driver would promptly produce a spade and
dig out the wheels, making the way for the next cart
that passed worse than ever. Two litters passed as
empty, and we met any number of donkeys laden,
I cannot say with firewood, but with bundles of
twigs that in any other country that I know would
not be worth the gathering, much less the transport,
but would be burnt as waste. And there were
numberless people on foot, this was evidently a much-
frequented highway, since it was busy now when
it was threatening rain, for no Chinese go out in the
rain if they can help it. I thoroughly sympathise, I
should think twice myself before going if I had but
one set of clothes and nowhere to dry them if they
got wet. The hill-sides were rocky and sterile, but
wherever there was a flat place, wherever there was
a little pocket of fertile ground, however inaccessible
it might appear, it was carefully cultivated, so was
all the valley bottom along the banks of the river,
and all this ground was crying out for the rain. And
then presently down it came, heavy, pouring rain
such as I had only seen once before in China. It
drove across our pathway like a veil, all the rugged
hills were softened and hidden in a grey mist, and
my muleteer drew over and around me sheets of
yellow oiled paper through which I peered at the
surrounding scenery. I wasn't particularly anxious
to get wet myself, because I did not see in an open
boat how on earth I was ever to get dry again, and
three or four days wet or even damp, would not have
been either comfortable, or healthy.

828 A WOMAN IN CHINA

At last we arrived at the river, a broad, swift-
flowing, muddy river running along the bottom of
the valley and apparently full to the brim, at least
there were no banks, and needless to say, of course,
there was not a particle of vegetation to beautify it.
There was a crossing here very like the ferrying-
place I had crossed on my journey up, and there
were a row of long boats with one end of them against
the bank. It was raining hard when I arrived, and
the litter was lifted down from the mules, but the
only thing to do was to sit still and await the arrival
of Tuan and my baggage in the Peking cart.

They came at last, and the rain lifting a little
Tuan set about preparing one of the boats for my
reception.

I must confess I looked on with interest, because
I did not quite see how I was going to spend several
days wth a servant and three boatmen in such
cramped quarters. The worst of it was there was no
getting out of it now if I did not like it, it had
to be done. Though I do worry so much I
always find it is about the wrong thing. I had
never — and I might well have done so — thought
about the difficulties of this boat journey until I stood
on the banks of the river, committed to it, and beyond
the range of help from any of my own colour. For
one moment my heart sank. If it had been the
evening I should have despaired, but with fourteen
good hours of daylight before me I can always feel
hopeful, especially if they are to be spent in the
open air. The wupan is about thirty-seven feet
long, flat bottomed, and seven feet wide in the
middle, tapering of course towards the ends. In
the middle V-shaped sticks hold up a ridge pole, and

IN A WUPAN 329

across this Tuan put a couple of grass mats we had
bought for this purpose, then he produced some
unbleached calico — and when I think of what I paid
for that unbleached calico, and how poor the Chinese
peasants are, I am surprised that the majority of them
do not go naked — and proceeded to make of it a
little tent for me right in the middle of the awning.
I stood it until I discovered that the idea was he
should sleep at one end and the boatmen at the
other, and then I protested. What I was to be
guarded from I did not know, but I made him clearly
understand that one end of the boat I must have to
myself. There might be a curtain across the other
end of the awning, that I did not mind, but I must
be free to go out without stepping on sleeping servant
or boatmen. That little matter adjusted, much to
his surprise, the next thing we had to think about
was the stove. I wanted it so placed that when the
wind blew the matting did not make a funnel that
would carry the smoke directly into my face. But
that is just exactly what it did do, and I've come to
the conclusion there is no possible way of arranging
a stove comfortably on a winding river. We tried
it aft, and we tried it for'ard, and when it was aft it
seemed the wind was behind, and when it was for'ard
the wind was ahead, and whichever way the smoke
came it was equally unpleasant, so I decided the
only thing to be done was to smile and look pleasant,
and be thankful that whereas I required three meals
a day to sustain me in doing nothing, my boatmen
who did all the work and had a stove of their own,
apparently, sustained life on two. The ideal way
would be to have a companion and two boats, and
then the trip would be delightful.

3SO A WOMAN tS CHINA

As it was I found it well worth doing.

The rain stopped that first day soon after we left
the crossing-place, and from the little low boat the
mountains on either side appeared to tower above
us, rugged, precipitous, sterile ; they were right down
to the water's edge and the river wound round, and
on the second day we were in the heart of the
mountains, and passed through great rocky gorges.
It was lonely for China, but just as I thought that
no human being could possibly live in such a sterile
land, I would see far up on the hills a little spot of
blue, some small boy herding goats, or a little
pocket of land between two great rocks, carefully
tilled, and the young green crops just springing up.
And then again there were little houses, neat, tidy
little houses with heavy roofs, and I wondered what
it must be like to be here in the mountains when
the winter held them in its grip. Somehow it seemed
to me far more lonely and desolate than anything I
had seen on my way across country.

We always tied up for the men to eat their midday
meal, and we always tied up for the night. But we
wakened at the earliest glimmer of dawn. They
evidently breakfasted on cold millet porridge, and
I, generally, was up and dressed and had had my
breakfast and forgotten all about it by five-thirty in
the morning. My bed took up most of the room in my
quarters, I dressed and washed on it, a bath was
out of the question, and pulling aside the curtains
sat on it and had my breakfast, the captain of the
boat, the gentleman with the steering-oar, looking
on with the greatest interest.

He spoke to Tuan evidently about my breakfast,
and I asked him what he said.

A FAIR WIND ON THE LANHO.

MY BOAT AND CREW.

IN A WUPAN 881

" She say what a lot you eat," said Tuan. " Not
in ten days she have so much."

And I was surprised, because I had thought my
breakfast exceedingly frugal. I had watched the
eggs being poached, and I ate them without butter
or toast or bacon, I had a dry piece of bread, tea,
of course, and some unappetising stewed pears.
But by and by I was watching my captain shovelling
in basinsful of millet porridge, about ten times as
much as I ate, and I came to the conclusion it was
the variety he was commenting on, not the amount.

They were things of delight those early mornings
on the river. ' At first all the valley would be wrapped
in a soft grey mist, with here and there the highest
peaks, rugged and desolate, catching the sunlight;
then gradually, gradually, the sun came down the
valley and the mists melted before his rays, lingering
here and there in the hollows, soft and grey and
elusive, till at last the sunlight touched the water
and gave this muddy water of the river a golden tint,
and all things rejoiced in the new-born day. The
little blue kingfishers preened themselves, the blue-
grey cranes with white necks and black points that
the Chinese call " long necks " sailed with outspread
wings slowly across the water, and the sunlight on
the square sails of the upcoming boats made them
gleam snow white. For there was much traffic on the
river. Desolate as the country round was, the river
was busy. The boats that were going down stream
were rowed, and those that were coming up, when
the wind was with them, put out great square
sails, and when it was against them were towed
by four men. They fastened the towing rope
to the mast, stripped themselves, and slipping a

882 A WOMAN IN CHINA

loop over their heads fixed it round their chests and
pulled by straining against a board that was fast in
the loop. The current was strong, and it must have
been hard work judging by the way they strained on
the rope. The missionaries were afraid I would be
shocked at the sight of so many naked men, but it
was the other way round, my presence, apparently
the only woman on the river, created great consterna-
tion, for the Chinaman is a modest man. Badly I
wanted to get a photograph of those straining men,
for never have I seen the Chinese to greater
advantage. In their shabby blue cotton they look
commonplace and of the slums, you feel they are
unwashed, but these suggest splendid specimens of
brawny manhood. They don't need to be washed.
However, as we approached, boatmen and servant
all raised their voices in a loud warning singsong.
What they said, I do not know, but it must have
been something like : " Oh brothers, put on your
clothes. We have a bothering foreign woman on
board." The result would be a wild scramble and
everybody would be getting into dirty blue garments,
only some unfortunate, who was steering in a
difficult part or had hold of a rope that could not be
dropped, was left helpless, and he crouched down or
hid behind a more lucky companion. If there had
been anybody with whom to laugh I would have
laughed many a time when we met or passed boats
on the Lanho. But I never got a really good photo-
graph of those towing men. My men evidently felt
it would be taking them at a disadvantage, and the
production of my camera was quite sufficient to send
us off into mid stream, as far away from the towing
boat as possible.

IN A WUPAN 888

Occasionally the hills receded just a little and left
a small stretch of flat country where there were
always exceedingly neat-looking huts. There were
the neatest bundles of sticks stacked all round them,
just twigs, and we landed once to buy some, for the
men cooked entirely with them, and my little stove
needed them to start the charcoal. But oh, the
people who came out of those houses were dirty.
Never have I seen such unclean-looking unattrac-
tive women. One had a child in her arms with per-
fectly horrible-looking eyes, and I knew there was
another unfortunate going to be added to the many
blind of China. She ran away at the sight of me,
and so did two little stark-naked boys. I tempted
them with biscuits, and their grandfather or great-
grandfather, he might have been, watched with the
deepest interest. He and I struck up quite a friend-
ship over the incident, smiling and laughing and
nodding to one another, as much as to say, " Yes, it
was natural they should be afraid, but we — we, who
had seen the world — of course knew better." Then
he went away and fetched back in his arms another
small shaven-headed youngster whom he patted and
petted and called my attention to, as much as to
say this was little Benjamin, the well-beloved, had
I not a biscuit for him? Alas I had been too long
away from civilisation and I had given away all I
had. But when I think about it, it is always with
a feeling of regret that I had not a sweet biscuit for
that old Chinaman up in the mountains and his best-
beloved grandson.

I saw one morning some men fishing in the
shallows by a great rock, and I demanded at once
that we buy a fish. They were spearing the fish and

884 A WOMAN IN CHINA

we bought a great mud-fish for five cents, for I saw
the money handed over, and then the unfortunate
fish with a reed through his gills was dragged through
the water alongside the boat. When I came to eat
a small piece of him, which I did with interest I was
so tired of chicken, he was abominable, and I smiled
a little ruefully when I found in the accounts he was
charged at thirty-five cents! Judging by the nasti-
ness of that fish one ought to be able to buy up the
entire contents of the Lanho for such a sum. How-
ever, the boatmen ate him gladly, and I suppose if I
lived on millet for breakfast, tiffin, and dinner, and
any time else when I felt hungry, I might even
welcome a mud-fish for a change. Their only relish
appeared to be what Tuan called "sour pickle."
There was one most unappetising-looking salted
turnip which lasted a long while, though every one
of the crew had a bite at it.

Gorge after gorge we passed, and the rocks rising
above us seemed very high, while the sun beating
down upon the water in that enclosed space made it
very hot in the middle of the day, and I was very
glad indeed of the mat awning, though, of course,
it was of necessity so low that even I, who am a short
woman, could not stand up underneath, but it kept
off the sun, and the air, coming through as we were
rowed along, made a little breeze. There were
rapids, many rapids, but they did not impress me.
I couldn't even get up a thrill, sometimes indeed the
boat was turned right round, but it always seemed
that the worst that might happen to me would be
that I should have to get out and walk, and of course
get rather wet in the process. Tuan made a great
fuss about them all, " must take care " but the worst

IN A WUPAN 385

one of all he was so exceedingly grave over that I
felt at least we were risking our valuable lives. It
was inside the wall and was called " Racing Horse
Rapid " but it wasn't very bad. I have been up
much worse rapids on the Volta, in West Africa, and
nobody seemed to think they were anything out of the
ordinary, but then the negro has not such a rooted
objection to water as the Chinaman apparently has.
My crew had to get wet, up to their waists some-
times, and it was a little rough on them — I remem-
bered it in their cumshaw — that having a woman on
board their modesty did not allow them to strip, and
they went in with all their clothes on.

The Wall, broken for the passing of the river, is
always a wonder, and here it was wonderful as ever.
We stopped here for a little in order, as far as I
could make out, that Tuan might get some ragged
specimens of humanity to pluck a couple of chickens,
being too grand a gentleman to do it himself, and
for a brief space the foreshore was white with
feathers, for the thrifty Chinaman, who finds a use
for everything, once he has made feather dusters
has no use for feathers. Feather pillows he knows
not. But for once Tuan's skill in putting the work
he was paid for doing, off on to other people, failed
either to amuse or irritate me. I had eyes for
nothing but the Wall — the Wall above all other walls
still — for all it is in ruins. As we went down the
river it followed along the tops of the highest hills
for over a mile. Always the Wall cuts the skyline.
There is never anything higher than the Wall. And
here, as if this river valley must be extra well
guarded, on every accessible peak was a watch-
tower. They are all in ruins now, but they speak

836 A WOMAN IN CHINA

forcibly of the watch and ward that was kept here
once. There was one square ruin on the highest
peak. As evening fell, heavy, threatening clouds
gathered and it stood out against them. As we went
far down the valley it was always visible, now to the
right of us, now to the left, as the river wound, and
when I thought it was gone in the gathering gloom,
a jagged flash of lightning, out of the black cloud
behind it, illumined it again, and for the moment I
forgot that it was ruined, and thought only what an
excellent vantage-point those old-time builders had
chosen. All the country round must see the beacon
fire flaring there. And again I thought of the sig-
nals that must have gone up, " The Mongols are
coming down the river. The Manchus are gather-
ing in the hills."

Those heavy clouds bespoke rain, and that
night it came down, came down in torrents, and if
there is a more uncomfortable place in which to be
rained upon than a small boat I have yet to find it.
Those grass mats kept off some of the rain, but
they were by no means as water-tight as I should
have liked. I spread my burberry over my bed, put
up my umbrella, and stopped up the worst leaks
with all the towels I could spare, and yet the water
came in, and on the other side of my calico screen I
could hear the men making a few remarks, which
Tuan told me next day were because, " she no can
cook dinner, no can dry clothes." I had lent them
my charcoal stove, but it was small and would only
dry " littee, littee clothe " so everybody including
myself got up next morning in a querulous mood,
and very sorry for themselves. The others at least
were earning their pay, but I wondered how I was

IN A WUPAN 337

going to make money out of it, and again I ques-
tioned the curious fate that sent me wandering
uncomfortably about the world, and sometimes
actually — yes actually getting enjoyment out of it.
I didn't enjoy that day, however. We went on a
little and at length we stopped, all the country was
veiled in soft moist grey mist, the perpetual sunshine
of Northern China was gone, and Tuan and the
boatman came to me. They proposed, of all the
Chinese things in this world to do, to go back!
Why I don't know now, for to go back meant going
against the stream and towing the boat! A very
much harder job than guiding it down stream, where
it would go of its own weight. I have not often put
my foot down in China. I have always found it
best to let my servants, or those I employed, go
about things their own way, but this was too much
for me. I made it clearly understood that the boat
belonged to me for the time being, and that back I
would not go.

Tuan murmured something about some place
" she get dry " and I quite agreed looking at the
shivering wretches, but that place had got to be
ahead, not behind us. However, go on they would
not, so we pulled up against the bank and all four
of them cowered over the little charcoal stove till I
feared lest they would be asphyxiated with the
fumes. I got in my bed, pulled my eiderdown
round me, and thanked Providence I had it, a
sleeping bag, and a burberry, and then as best I
could I dodged the drops that came through the
matting, but I knew I wasn't nearly so uncomfort-
able as my men. At last the rain lifted a little, and
three rueful figures pulled us down to a small, a very

Y

388 A WOMAN IN CHINA

small temple wherein they lighted a fire and cooked
themselves a warm meal. By that time the rain had
gone, and they were smiling and cheerful once more.

As the result of that rain the river rose three feet,
the rapids were easier than ever to go over, only of
course there was the risk of hitting the rocks that
were now submerged, and the waters were muddier
than ever. I felt as if all those mountain-sides were
being washed down into the Lanho, as they probably
were. All along the banks, too, the people were
collected gathering — not driftwood, for there was
none, but driftweed, gathering it in with rakes and
dipping-in baskets, holding them out for the water
to run away and using the residuum " for burn," as
Tuan put it. It was dreary, wet, grey, cold. The
country grew flatter as we came down the river, the
hills receded; we were in an agricultural country
which was benefiting, I doubt not, by this rain, but
with the mountains went the stern grandeur, and
cold rain on a flat country is uninspiring. Be-
sides breakfast before five-thirty leaves a long day
before one, and the incidents were so small. I
watched the captain steering and refreshing himself
with a bite at a pink radish as large and as long as
a parsnip, and it looked cold and uninviting. Surely
I ought to be thankful that Fate had not caused
me to be born a Chinese of the working classes.

The captain had a large cash-box which reposed
trustfully at the end of my bed. Not that I could
have got into it, for it was fastened with the sort of
padlock that I should put on park gates, and I cer-
tainly couldn't have carried it away, at least not
unbeknownst, for it was a cube of at least eighteen
inches. It gave me the idea of great wealth, for

GOING TO THE DRAGON BOAT FEAST.

COOK STALL.

IN A WUPAN 339

never in my life do I expect to require a cash-box
like that. If I did I should give up story writing
and grow old with a quiet mind. But then I do not
take my earnings in copper cash.

More and more as we went along the river was T
reminded of my idea of Babylon — Babylon with the
romance taken out of it, Babylon grown common-
place. At one place we stopped at, there came
down to the ferry a short fat man in blue, in a large
straw hat, leading a donkey. But he belonged to
no age, he was Sancho Panza to the life. Again
there came a gentleman mounted on a mule, his
servant following slowly on a small grey donkey.
He was nicely dressed in darkish petticoats, and
his servant wore the usual blue. They stood on the
river-bank and the servant hailed the ferry. With
a little difficulty the beasts were got on board and
the boat poled across. It was just a wupan like
my own, decked in the middle so that the animals
would not have to step down. The donkey came off
as if it were all in the day's work, but the mule was
obstinate, and it took the entire population of that
little crossing-place, including Tuan and my boat-
men, to hoist him off. The person most interested,
the rider, never stirred a finger. True son of Babylon
was he. " Let the slaves see to all things," I imagine
him saying. There was a little refreshment booth,
and a man selling long fingers of paste, or rather
fried batter. My captain handled one thoughtfully
and then put it back.

"Doesn't he like it?" I asked Tuan. It seemed
to me so much nicer than the pink radish.

" She like," said Tuan, "too much monies. Very
dear," and I think I could have bought up the whole

840 A WOMAN IN CHINA

stock in trade for twenty cents, about fivepence, so
the cash-box was a fraud after all.

Now the hills had receded into the dim distance
there were no more rapids, and I was back on the
great alluvial plain of Northern China once more.
The sun came out in all his glory, there were in-
numerable boats, and the evening sunlight gleamed
on their white sails. Many of them were full of
people, with many women amongst them, and Tuan
told me it was the Dragon Boat Festival.

And then, as the evening shadows were falling,
we came to the port of Lanchou and my journey in
a wupan was ended.

CHAPTER XIX

A RIVER PORT IN BABYLON

The question of squeeze — Batter fingers for the boatmen — An
array of damp scarecrows — Ox carts — Prehistoric wheels —
A decadent people — Beggars — The playing of a part — A
side show — Cumshaw.

THEY tell me I must not talk about a river port in
Babylon, because Babylon was a city not a country,
and it had no river port, but in that valley of
Mesopotamia there must have been in those old
days, little places where the people living along the
banks landed their produce, or gathered it in, and
I think they must have resembled this river port
of Lanchou in Chihli, to which I came one still
pleasant evening in June.

The sun was on the point of setting, and I con,-
sulted Tuan about where I should go for the night.
The inns, he opined, would be full, for all the
country-side had come to the feast, and, in truth, I
did not hanker much after a Chinese inn. I in-
finitely preferred the wupan, even at its very worst,
when the rain was coming through the matting. I
only wondered if Tuan and the boatmen would
think it extremely undignified of me to stay where
I was. The worst I knew there were the cock-
roaches, and Heaven only knew what I might find
in a Chinese inn in June.

842 A WOMAN IN CHINA

Apparently Tuan did not think it undignified, and
the boatmen of course were glad.

'' You pay him one dollar," suggested Tuan.
Now a dollar is a thousand cash, and a thousand
cash, I suppose would about fill that money-box of
his. He got the dollar, because I paid it him my-
self, but what squeeze Tuan extracted I am sure I
don't know. Some he did get, I suppose as of
right, for squeeze seems to be the accepted fact in
China.

A woman once told me how she was offered
squeeze and a good big squeeze too.

She was head of a hospital, and being an attrac-
tive young person, she used to go out pretty often
for motor drives with the locomotive superintendent
of the nearest railway. The Chinese took note of
this, as apparently they do of all things likely to
concern them, and one day there called upon her a
Chinaman, well-dressed, of the better class. He
stood at the door of her sitting-room, shaking his
own hands; and bowed three times.

" What do you want ? " said she, for she had
never to her knowledge, seen him before.

He spoke as good English, almost as she did
herself, and he said, well it was a little matter in
which she might be of service to him, and — yes —
he of service to her.

She looked at him in astonishment. " But I
don't know you," she said, puzzled and sur-
prised.

It was a matter of oil, he said at last, when he got
to the point. It was well known that the engines
required a great deal of oil, and he had several
thousands of tons of oil for sale.

A RIVER PORT IN BABYLON 343

" But what has that to do with me ? " asked the
girl, more surprised than ever.

He bowed again. "You are a great friend
nf »

\JL~~~

(i But how do you know that ? "

" Oh pardon/' his hand on his heart, " Chinaman
know everything. You can help me."

" How? " she said still wondering.

"You speak to Mr . He buy oil," and he

looked at her ingratiatingly.

She stared at him, hardly knowing whether to be
angry or not.

" I have nothing to do with the locomotives."

" Oh, but it will pay you," said he, and from each
side out of a long pocket he drew two heavy bags,
and planked them down on her writing-table. Still
she did not understand what he was driving at.

" For you," said he, " for a few words."

"Why, you are offering me squeeze," said she
indignantly, as the full meaning of the thing flashed
on her.

He made a soothing sound with his mouth.
" Everybody does it," said he.

" Indeed I don't."

" Not enough? " said he. " There is five hundred
and fifty dollars there," and he looked at her ques-
tioningly. "Well," thoughtfully, "I can make it
two hundred dollars more, I have much oil," and
down went another bag of silver. More than six
months' salary was on the table.

<: And suppose," said she, curious, " Mr pays

no attention to me."

CTThat would be unfortunate," with a low bow,
" but I think not. I have much oil. I take risk."

344 A WOMAN IN CHINA

Then she rose up wrathfully. " Take it away,"
she said, " take it away. How dare you offer me
squeeze ! " And he did take it away, and as he
probably knew her salary to the very last penny,
thought her a fool for her pains.

I don't know whether Tuan extracted his squeeze
beforehand, but I know all three boatmen had the
long fingers of batter fried in lard for their breakfast
the next morning, for I saw them having them, and
Tuan informed me with a grin, " Missie pay dollar.
Can do," and I was very glad I had not patronised
the Chinese inn.

Of course I rose very early. Before half-past
four I was up and dressed and peeping out of my
little tent at the rows and rows of boats that lay
double-banked against the shore. The sun got up
as early as I did, and most of those people in the
boats were up before him. The boats were own
sisters to the one in which I had come down the
river, with one mast, and shelters in the middle,
and all the people had suffered, as we had done,
from wet, for such a drying day I have never before
seen. All the sails of course had to be dried, all
the mats, the dilapidated bedding, and it seemed
most of the clothing, for padded blue coats and
trousers were stuck on sticks, or laid out in the sun.
All the scarecrows that ever I had known, had
apparently come to grief on that double-banked row
of boats. The banks were knee-deep in mud, but
it was sandy mud that soon dried, and by six o'clock
business on that shore was in full swing. There was
a theatre and fair going on close at hand, but busi-
ness had to be attended to all the same. These
boatmen all still wear the queue, so the barber was

A RIVER PORT IN BABYLON 345

very busy, as it is of course impossible to shave on
board a boat, and even the immaculate Tuan had a
fine crop of bristles all over his head. They were
gone before he gave me breakfast this morning.
The alluvial mud of the shore was cut into deep cart
ruts, and there were any number of carts coming
down to the boats and going away from them.
There were ox carts with a solitary ox, harnessed
much as a horse would be and looking strange to
me, accustomed to the bullock drays of Australia
with their bullocks, ten or twenty of them drawing
by a single wooden yoke, there were mule carts and
carts heavy with merchandise drawn by a mixed team
of mule, ox, and the small and patient donkey, and
the people took from the boats their loading of grain,
grown far away in Mongolia, of stones, gathered by
the river-bank, water- worn stones used for making
the picturesque garden and courtyard paths the
Chinese love, and even sometimes for building, and
of osiers, grown up in the mountains. There were
piles and piles of these, and men were carrying them
slung on the ends of their bamboos. And the boats,
for the return journey were loaded, as far as I could
see, with salt and the thin tissue paper they use every-
where for the windows, it is much more portable than
glass, and cotton stuffs, such as even the poorest up
in the mountains must buy for their clothing. And
because it was the Dragon Boat Feast, I suppose,
many of the boats were full of passengers, people
who had started thus early to make a day of it,
innumerable small-footed women and small, shaven-
headed children, what little there was left of their
hair done up in tiny plaits, that stood straight out
on end. And all had on their best clothing. Even

346 A WOMAN IN CHINA

the gentleman whose picture I have taken standing
under a tree had on a new hat of the brightest
yellow matting, and I wondered whether the poorer
folk who thronged the river-side in Mesopotamia,
so many long centuries ago, were not something like
him. The only thing that was modern was the
railway station and rolling stock, just behind the
river-side town, and the great iron bridge that spans
the river. Modern civilisation come to Babylon. It
has barely touched the surface though of this age-
old civilisation. The people who came crowding
into the feast came in carts with heavy wooden
wheels, Punch's prehistoric wheels, exactly as their
ancestors came, possibly three thousand years ago,
and the carts were drawn by mules, by oxen, by
donkeys, and were covered, some with the ordinary
blue cloth, some with grass matting, and sometimes,
when they were open, the women carried umbrellas
of Chinese oiled paper, with here and there one of
ordinary European pattern. And the carts were
packed very close together indeed, for there were
numberless women, and the majority of them could
only just totter along. For them to walk far or
for long, would be a sheer impossibility. Country
people? No, again I saw it strongly, these were
serfs, perhaps, but not country people, they were a
highly civilised people, far more highly civilised
than I am who sit in judgment, so civilised that they
were decadent, effete, and every woman was help-
less!

They crowded round the theatricals that were
going on there in the open, and all the stalls were
crowded together round them too. These sellers
cannot afford to spread themselves out when half of

A MIXED TEAM.

A WAYFARER.

A RIVER PORT IN BABYLON 847

the likely buyers must needs be stationary. Never
have I seen so many Chinese women of the well-to-
do class together before. They wore their gayest
silks and satins and embroidered coats, their hair
was elaborately dressed and decked with flowers,
their faces were painted and powdered, and usually
there was on them the faintest of impassive smiles.
Poor women of modern Babylon, maimed and
crippled! It was rather a relief to look at the
beggars, and there were many of them, who, clad
in sacking and filthy rags, with wild black hair, beat
their foreheads in the dust, and made loud moan of
their sufferings. Everyone plays his part properly
in China. It is the beggars' to make loud moan, it
is the women's to give no hint of the cruel suffering
that has made childhood and youth a torture, and
left the dreadful aftermath behind it.

I had plenty of time to see everything, for the
train was not due till eleven, and when it grew too
hot to stay in the open any longer, I went on to the
platform and sat in the shade, and formed a sort of
side show to the fair, for so many people crowded
round to look at the foreign woman, and they had
more than what a servant of one of my friends called
"a littee stink," that at last the station policeman,
who was really a soldier guarding the line, came and
cleared them away drastically with drawn sword, and
I explained, as best I could, that on this great occa-
sion, I hadn't the least objection to being a show,
for very likely many of these people had come from
beyond the beaten tracks, from places where
foreigners were scarce, but I must have sufficient
air.

Tuan got the tickets, and then I suppose, seeing

348 A WOMAN IN CHINA

his time was short, for we should be in Peking by
seven, and should certainly part, he relieved his
mind and asked a question that had evidently been
burning there ever since we had left the mission
station.

" Missie have pay mission boys cumshaw."

Now the cumshaw had been a difficulty.

My hostess had come to me and said : " I know
you are going to give a cumshaw. I may as well
tell you that if our visitors don't we always do our-
selves, because the servants expect it, but I am come
to beg of you not to give too much and to give it
through us. In fact the cook went for his holiday
last night and we gave him eighty cents and said it
was from you."

"Eighty cents!" I was afraid those servants
would think me very mean. But my hostess was
very fluent on the subject, and very determined.
The majority of their visitors could not possibly
afford to give much, and they were very anxious not
to establish a precedent. What was I to do? I
might have supplemented it through Tuan, but I
felt it would be making a poor return to the people
who had been so kind to me, so I was obliged to let
it go at that.

" I pay Missie, she give cumshaw for me," said I
to Tuan.

"Ah!" said that worthy, as if he had settled a
doubt satisfactorily in his own mind, " boy say
Missie pay eighty cent, I say, not my Missie, she
give five, ten dollar, always give five, ten dollar, your
Missie give eighty cent ! "

And as I went on my way to Peking, across the
plain in its summer dress of lush green kaoliang, I

A RIVER PORT IN BABYLON 349

wondered sorrowfully if all the return I had made for
the kindness received was to have those mission-
aries accused of pocketing the cumshaw I was
supposed to have given.

But I was glad to come back, glad not to think
any more of the Chinaman as a creature whose soul
had to be saved, glad to come back to my ordinary
associates who were ordinarily worldly and selfish,
and felt that they might drink a whisky-and-soda
and consider their own enjoyment, though there were
a few hundred million people in outer darkness
around them. The majority of us cannot live in the
rarefied atmosphere ijiat demands constant sacri-
fice and abnegation for the sake of those we do not
and cannot love.

CHAPTER XX

THE WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT

The heat of Peking — The wall by moonlight — Tongshan — " Your
devoted milkman " — The eye of the mistress — A little fort —
In case of an outbreak — The Temple of the Sleeping Buddha —
A runaway bride — The San Shan An — My own temple court-
yard—The missing outfit— The Language Officer— Friends in
need.

IT was David, I think, who said in his haste, that all
men are liars, but I suppose he was right, if he meant
as he probably did, that at one time or another, we
are all of us given to making rash statements. I
expect it would be a rash statement to say that
Peking in the summer is the hottest place in the
world, and that the heat of West Africa, that much-
maligned land, is nothing to it, and yet, even when
I think over the matter at my leisure, I know that
the heat, for about six weeks, is something very
hard to bear. I suspect it is living in a stone house
inside the city walls that makes it so hot. Could I
have slept in the open I might have taken a different
view. I slept, or rather I did not sleep, with two
windows wide open, and an electric fan going, but,
since Peking mosquitoes are of the very aggressive
order, bred in the imperial canal, the great open
drain that runs through the city, it was always
necessary to keep the mosquito curtains drawn. If
anyone doubts that a house with mosquito-proof

350

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 851

windows and doors is an airless death-trap, let him
try and sleep under mosquito curtains, while hoping
for a breath of cool air from the electric fan. Fully
half the air is cut off, but as the mosquito curtains
are raised during the daytime, the air over the bed
is renewed daily. In that abomination a mosquito-
proof house, it is never renewed.

Since it was a choice between little air and plenty
of mosquitoes. I chose the shortage of air, and
generally went to bed with a deep soup plate full of
cold water, and a large sponge. It made the bed
decidedly wet, but that was an advantage.

I did not go away because the war had started
between the North and the South, and no one knew
exactly what was going to happen. To be at the
heart of things is often to be too close, wiser eyes
than mine saw nothing. Once there was a rumour
that the Southern army would march on Peking,
and that promised excitement, but in the city itself,
though there was martial law, there was no excite-
ment, and the only pleasant thing to do was to go
on moonlight evenings and sit on the wall. There
was a cool breath of air there, if there was anywhere,
and at any rate the moonlight lent it a glamour, and
the fireflies, that came out after the rain, gave the
added touch that made it fairyland.

But at last the heat was too much even for me, who
am not wont to complain of whatever sort of weather
is doled out to me, and I accepted the invitation of a
friend to stay at Tongshan, which is a great railway
centre, a place where there is a coal mine, and some
large cement works run by capable and efficient
Germans.

And at Tongshan I lived in the house that was

352 A WOMAN IN CHINA

held for defence during the Boxer trouble. The
barrier at the gate — the barrier that is at the gate of
all Chinese houses, to keep off evil spirits, who can
only move in a straight line — was so curious that I
took a photograph of it, and against the walls that
surround the grounds were the look-out places which
the railwaymen manned, and from which they kept
watch and ward.

I have always liked the feeling of living in a fort
— a place where men have helped to make history,
but I have observed that it is always the immediate
trifle that is to the fore that counts, and my friend's
servants were a perpetual joy and delight to me.
They used to write her letters. There was one, a
touching one, from the milkman I shall remember
with joy. A " cunningful " cook had misrepresented
him, and he wished to be taken into favour again,
and he signed himself distractedly " Your devoted
milkman." The cow was brought round so that it
might be milked before the eyes of the buyer, and
only a Chinaman, surely, would have been capable
of concealing a bottle of water up his sleeves and
letting it run slowly down his arm as he milked, so
that the cow was unjustly accused of giving very
poor milk. Besides, when the cow's character was
cleared, who knew from where that water had been
taken, and how much dirt it had washed off the arm
down which it ran. No pleading took that milkman
into favour again, despite the tenderness expressed
in his signature. Another man had been away, and
returning, wished a small job as watchman at six
dollars a month, and begging for it by letter, he
signed himself fervently " Your own Ah Foo." But
the crowning boy was the No. i boy. He was a

THE FORT IN THE COMPOUND AT TONGSHAN.

ENTRANCE TO HOUSE, TONGSHAN.

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 353

delicious person without intending it. When first
my friend engaged him, she acquired at the same
time a small dog, and she soon realised that the
rigorous Chinese winter was hard on dogs, and that
Ben must have a little coat. The question was how
to make the coat. No. i boy came to the rescue.

Mr at the railway station had a dog, and

"Marcus," said the boy, "have two coats."

" Oh we'll borrow one and copy it," said his
mistress, relieved.

"My tink," said the boy confidentially, and he
sank his voice, " Missie bolly, more better not send
back." And he looked at her to see if this wisdom
would sink in.

"Boy!"

" Marcus have two coats," repeated he reproach-
fully.

The owner of Marcus, on the story being told
to him, when the coat was borrowed with every
assurance it should be returned, admitted that if
occasionally he saw among his accounts a coat for
Marcus he always paid for it, and supposed the old
one had worn out. Thinking it over, he thought
perhaps he had supplied a friend or two, or more
possibly his friends' servants. No. i boy made a
mistake in taking his mistress into his confidence,
instead of charging her for " one piecey dog coat."

But, of course that is the trouble with Missies, as
compared with Masters, they have such inquiring
minds. There was once a man of violent temper
who was in the habit of letting off steam on his
No. i boy. He abused him roundly, and even beat
him whenever he felt out of sorts, yet greatly to the
surprise of all his friends, the boy put up with him,

z

854 A WOMAN IN CHINA

and made him a very excellent servant. Presently
he married, and then, much to his surprise, before
a month was out the boy, who had been faithful and
long-suffering for so long, came and gave notice.

"But why?" asked the astonished man.

" Master beat," said the boy laconically.

" D n it," said the man, " I've beaten you a

dozen times before. Why do you complain now?*'

" Before time," explained the boy solemnly,
" when Master beat, my put down one dollar, sugar,
one dollar flour. Now Missie come, no can. My
go."

He did not mind a beating so long as he could
make his master pay for it, but when an inquiring
mistress questioned these little items for groceries
that she knew had never been used, he gave up the
place, he could no longer get even with his master.
It was a truly Chinese way of looking at things.

These were some of the stories they told me in the
house they had fortified against the Boxers and held
till the ships sent them a guard. And once the
sailors came there was no more danger. It was the
luckless country people who feared. The older men
pitied and understood the situation, but the mis-
chievous young midshipmen took a fearful joy in
scaring the problematical enemy.

"Who goes there?"

" Belong my," answered the shivering coolie,
endeavouring to slip past, and in deadly terror that
the pointed rifle would go off, They were ground
between two millstones those unfortunate peasants.
The Boxers harried them, and then the foreigners
came and avenged their wrongs on these who had
done probably no harm. Always it is these helpless

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 855

serfs who suffer in case of war. Other classes may
suffer — these are sure to.

They will never hold this house again should
necessity arise, for the well that gave them water has
gone dry.

Of course everyone hopes and says, that the
necessity never will arise again but for all that,
they are not, the foreign settlers in China, quite as
certain of their safety as one would be in a country
town in England, for instance. They came in to
afternoon tea and tennis, men and women, and they
gave all attention to the amusement in hand, a light-
hearted, cheerful set of people, and then one little
speech and one saw there was another side. There
was always the might be. Everything was going on
as usual, everywhere around were peaceable, sub-
servient people, and yet — and yet terrible things had
happened in the past, who could say if they would
not happen again. Every now and again, not domi-
nating the conversation, but running a subcurrent
to it, would come up the topic of the preparations
they had made in case of " another outbreak."

One woman kept a box of clothes at Tientsin.

" I wonder you don't," she said looking at her
hostess. " No, my dear, don't you remember yet, I
never take sugar. Thank you. You ought to
think about it, you know. It is really so awkward if
one has to rush away in a hurry to find oneself with-
out clothes."

Another woman laughed, and yet she was very
much in earnest.

'f That's not the first thing to worry about. There,
that was vantage to them," she interpolated, taking
an interest in the game of tennis, " that young

356 A WOMAN IN CHINA

woman's going to make a nice little player. No,
what I think is that the place they have chosen to
hold is far too far away. Want your clothes in
Tientsin? I'm not at all sure you'll get over that
mile and a half from your house in safety, and I've
farther still to go, with two little children too. Why

don't you get your husband to Oh there

they've finished ! Now have I time for another set? "

" It's after six."

" Good gracious ! And baby to bath ! I must go.
You speak to your husband about another place, my
dear. He'll have some influence."

"No, I wouldn't try to hold any place again," said
my host, thinking of the past, " I should be on the
train and off to Tientsin at the first hint of danger."

" But suppose you couldn't get away in time ? "

" Well, of course, that's possible," he said
thoughtfully, " and the Chinese are beggars at
pulling up railways."

I listened, and then I understood how people get
used to contemplating a danger that is only possible,
and not actually impending.

" If anything happens to Yuan Shih K'ai," but
then, of course, though that is not only a possible,
but even a probable danger, everyone hopes that
nothing will happen to Yuan Shih K'ai, just as if
anything did happen to him, they would hope things
would not be as bad as they had feared, and if their
worst fears were realised, then they would hope that
they would be the lucky ones who would not be
overwhelmed. This is human nature, at least one
side of human nature, the side of human nature that
has made of the British a great colonising people.

The autumn was coming, the golden, glowing

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 357

autumn of Northern China, so, coming back to
Peking, I determined to find out some place where
I could enjoy its beauties and write the book which
my publisher expected. Most people seem to think
that the writing of a book is a mere question of plenty
of time, a good pen, paper, and ink. ' You press
the button, we do the rest," promises a certain firm
that makes cameras ; but I do not find either writing
or taking photographs quite so simple a matter as all
that. To do either, even as well as I can, I want to
be by myself, for I am a sociable being, I do love the
society of my kind, to talk to them, to exchange ideas
with them, and when I am doing that, I cannot give
the time and attention it requires to writing. Every-
one who writes in China, and anyone who writes at
all is moved to take pen in hand to try and elucidate
its mysteries, wants to write in a temple in the
Western Hills. I was no exception to the rule.
The Western Hills, whose rugged outlines you can
see from Peking, called me, and I set out to look
for a temple. It was going to be easy enough to get
one, for " Legation " Peking goes to the hills in the
summer, and when autumn holds the land goes back
to the joys of city life.

The first I inspected was the Temple of the
Sleeping Buddha, a temple which has many court-
yards, and a figure of the Buddha, peacefully sleep-
ing. An emblem of peace looks the great bronze
figure. He is, of course, represented clothed, only
his feet are bare, and the faithful bring him offerings
of shoes, rows and rows of shoes there were on a
shelf at the side of the temple, some colossal, three
or four feet long, and some tiny, some made after
the fashion of the ordinary Chinese shoe, of silk or

858 A WOMAN IN CHINA

quilted satin, but some make-believe, and very
excellent make-believe, of paper. Looking at them
I could not have told the difference, and as the
Buddha's eyes are shut, he could not even go as far
as that. He certainly could not put them on, for his
feet are pressed closely together, the feet of a pro-
foundly sleeping man. All is peace here. Here
there is no trouble, no anxiety, that sleeping figure
seems to say.

But there was for all that. Where in the world is
there no trouble ?

It takes about three and a half hours to reach the
Sleeping Buddha Temple from Peking. First I took
a rickshaw across the city. Then from the north-
west gate, the Hsi Chih Men, still by rickshaw, I
went to the Summer Palace, and I did the remaining
five miles into the heart of the hills on a donkey. I
don't like riding a donkey, five miles on a donkey
on an uncomfortable Chinese saddle, riding astride,
wearies me to death, and when I was just thinking
life was no longer worth living I arrived, and
wandered into a courtyard where, at the head of
some steps, stood a little Chinese girl. She was
dressed in the usual dress of a girl of the better
classes, a coat and trousers, like a man usually wears
with us, only the coat had a high collar standing up
against her cheeks, and because she was unmarried,
she wore her hair simply drawn back from her face
and plaited in a long tail down her back, much as an
English schoolgirl wears it. She made me a pretty,
shy salutation, and called to her friend the English-
woman, who had rented the courtyard, and who was
living here while she painted pictures. This lady
was returning to Peking she said, next day, but she

PLACE OF TOMBS BELOW SAN SHAN AN.

VALLEY OF THE SAN SHAN AN.

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 359

very kindly invited me to luncheon, and she told me
the Chinese girl's story. She was practically in
hiding. She had been betrothed, of course, years
before to some boy she had never seen, and this
year the time had arrived for the carrying out of
the contract. But young China is beginning to think
it has rights and objects to being disposed of in
marriage without even a chance to protest. It
would not be much good the boy running away,
however much he objected to the matrimonial plans
his family had made for him, for he could be married
quite easily in his absence, a cock taking his place ;
but it beats even the Chinese to have a marriage
without a bride, therefore the girl had run away. The
time was past and the contract had not been carried
out. Poor little girl ! It surprised me that so shy and
quiet a little girl had found courage to defy authority
and run away, even though she had found out that
her betrothed was as averse from the marriage as she
was. She had unbound her feet, as if to signalise
her freedom ; but alas, the arch of her foot was
broken, and she could never hope to be anything
but flat-footed, still that was better than walking
with stiff knees, on her heels, as if her legs were a
couple of wooden pegs like the majority of her
fellow-countrywomen. The woman who was
befriending her suggested, as I was taking a temple
in the hills, I should give her sanctuary. That was
all very well, but the care of a helpless being, like a
Chinese girl, is rather an undertaking. I consulted
a friend who had been in China many years, and he
was emphatic on the subject.

"No, no, no. Never have anything to do with a
woman in China until she is well over forty. You

360 A WOMAN IN CHINA

don't know the trouble you will let yourself in for.
Chinese women ! " And he held up his hands. So
it appears that the secluded life does not make them
all that they ought to be.

However, while I was considering the matter,
some woman in Peking, kinder and less cautious
than I, stepped in and the little girl has found an
asylum, and is, I am assured by a friend, all right,
and better off than hundreds of her people. True
she easily might be that, and yet not have attained
to much.

I always seem to be talking of the condition of the
Chinese women, like King Charles's head, it comes
into everything. After all, the condition and status
of half the nation must be always cropping up when
one considers the people at all. "Chinese women,"
said a man, " are past-mistresses in false modesty."
And again I thought what a commentary on a nation.
To Western eyes how it marks the subjection and
the ignorance of the women.

When the first baby is coming, the bride is sup-
posed, though it would be a tragedy beyond all
words if she had no children, to be too shy to tell
her husband, or even her mother-in-law, so she puts
on bracelets, and then the family know that this
woman, at least, is about to fulfil her destiny. I
hope the little Chinese girl I found up in the Temple
of the Sleeping Buddha will yet marry, marry some-
one she chooses herself, will not need to pluck out
the front hairs on her forehead, and will be on such
terms with her husband, that though she may with
pride put on the bracelets, she may rejoice openly
that their love is crowned. I do not think there will
be any false modesty about her.

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 361

But I did not take a courtyard in the Sleeping
Buddha Temple. It was rented by the Y.M.C.A.
and I think that, combined with the donkey ride,
put me off. I felt I would rather go farther afield,
farther away from the traces of the foreigner, and I
could have my pick of temples in September. I
took the San Shan An, in another valley, one of the
lovely valleys of the world.

The San Shan An is only a small temple with a
central courtyard and two or three smaller ones,
and I agreed to take it for the sum of twenty-eight
dollars a month. I engaged a cook and a boy, the
boy's English was scanty and the cook had none,
but I only paid the two twenty-four dollars a month,
six dollars less than the valued Tuan had all to
himself, and one day in September I saw my house-
hold gods on to two carts, went myself by train, and
got out at the first station at the Western Hills.

I had taken the precaution, as I had no Chinese,
and I did not expect to meet anybody who under-
stood English, to have the name of the temple written
out in Chinese characters, and descending from the
train, after a little trouble I found one among the
wondering crowd who could read, and all that crowd,
a dirty little crowd, took an interest in my further
movements. They immediately supplied me with
donkeys and boys to choose from, and I had the
greatest difficulty in explaining that I did not want
a donkey, all I wanted was a guide. The only one
who seemed to grasp it was a very ragged indjvidual
who, with basket under his arm, and scoop in hand,
was gathering manure. He promptly seized my
dispatch-box, all the luggage I carried, and we
started, pursued by disappointed boys with donkeys,

862 A WOMAN IN CHINA

who could not believe that the foreign woman was
actually going to walk in the wake of a man who
gathered manure. I must confess it was a most
humble procession, even in my eyes, who am not
accustomed to standing on my dignity. My only
sister had given me that dispatch-case as a parting
present, and it looked wonderfully rich and cultured
in the very grimy hand that grasped it so trium-
phantly. I should never have had the heart to turn
that old man away, he looked so pleased at having
got a job. Off he went, and we walked for over
an hour across a flat and rough country, where the
kaoliang had been gathered on to the threshing
floors, and all the people this gorgeous hot autumn
day were at work there.

A threshing floor in the East makes one think of
Ruth and Boaz, and possibly these people were not
unlike those who worked on that threshing floor in
Judah so long ago, only they were dirty and poor,
and not comely as we picture the Moabitish beauty.
It was hot as we walked, and I grew a little doubtful
as we approached the hills — were we going in the
right direction.

" San Shan Erh," said my guide, and he repeated
it, and I grew more doubtful, for I did not know
then that these hill people say, "vSan Shan Erh"
where a more cultivated man would say " San Shan
An/' it is very Pekingese to have many " r's " to roll.
He combined business with pleasure, or rather he
combined his business, and whenever he came across
a patch of manure, he gathered it in, and I waited
patiently. At last we came to the entrance of a
well-wooded valley, and a well-wooded valley is a
precious thing in China, and we went up a roughly

VIEW FROM TEMPLE.

PLACE OF TOMBS BELOW THE LOOK-OUT PLACi

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 863

flagged pathway, flagged, I dare say, a couple of
hundred years ago or more, a steep pathway by a
graveyard, and between the trees that were just
taking on a tinge of autumn gold, we arrived at a
plateau built up with stones, and along beneath some
trees we entered a gate and came into a square brick
paved courtyard surrounded by low, one-storied
buildings, and with four pine-trees raising their dark
green branches against the deep blue sky. I had
seen so many temple courtyards, and now here was
one, that for a space, was to be my very own. In
China, it seems, the gods always make preparation
for taking in guests — at a price.

But was this my temple?

My heart sank, as for a moment I realised what
a foolish thing I had done. I had supposed, after
my usual fashion, that everything would go smoothly
for me, and now at the very outset, things were
going wrong, and I knew I was helpless. Two men
in blue, of the coolie class, old, and very, very dirty,
looked at me, and talked unintelligibly to my guide,
and he, very intelligibly, demanded his cumshaw,
but there was no sign of my possessions.

For the moment I feared, feared greatly. I was
entirely alone, what might not happen to me? I
might not even have been brought to the right
temple, for all I knew. In bridge, when doubtful
they say play to win, so I decided I must act as if
everything was all right, and I paid my guide his
cumshaw, saw him go, and not quite as happy
as I should have liked to have been, inspected the
temple. There was one big room that I decided
would do me for a living-room, if this were really
my temple, as it had a sort of little veranda or

864 A WOMAN IN CHINA

look-out place, which stood out on the cliff side over-
looking the place of tombs, and the plain where in
the distance, about twelve miles as the crow flies,
I could see in the clear atmosphere the walls of
Peking. They might as well have been a hundred,
I thought ruefully, for all the help I was likely to get
from that city to-night, if this were not really my
temple.

A Chinese temple is sparsely furnished. All the
rooms had stone floors, all of them opened into the
courtyard and not into one another, and for all
furniture there were the usual k'angs, two cupboards,
three tables, and three uncomfortable Chinese chairs.
I had hired an easy chair, a lamp, and with my camp
outfit I expected to manage. But where was my
camp outfit?

I could not understand a word of what the people
said, but they seemed friendly, they well might be, I
thought, I was entirely at their mercy, and a very
dirty old gentleman with claw-like hands, an un-
shaven head, and the minutest of queues came and
contemplated me in a way which was decidedly dis-
concerting. I went and looked at the gods, dusty
and dirty too in their sanctuaries. There was a most
musical bell alongside one of them and when I struck
it, the clang seemed to emphasise my loneliness and
helplessness. Could this be the right temple? If
it was not where was I to go ? There was no means
of getting back to Peking, short of walking, even
then the gates must be shut long before I arrived.
As far as I knew, there was no foreigner left in the
hills. I went on to the look-out place, and looked
out over the plain, and the old man came and looked
at me, and I grew more and more uncomfortable.

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 865

Tiffin time was long past, afternoon tea time came
and went. It had been warm enough in the middle
of the day, but the evenings grow chill towards the
end of September, and I had only a white muslin
gown on. At the very best the prospect of sleeping
on one of those cold and stony k'angs did not look
inviting. I could have cried as the shadows grew
long and the sun set.

And then, oh joy, down beneath me, out on the
hill-side, I heard a voice, an unmistakable American
voice. I had been terrified, and like a flash my
terrors rolled away. I looked over and there were
a man and a woman taking an evening stroll, very
much at home, for neither of them had on a hat.
I forgot in a moment I had been afraid and I hailed
them at once.

"Is this the San Shan An?"

" Sure," said the man as they looked up in
surprise.

Well, that was a relief anyhow, and I thought how
foolish I had been to be afraid. But where were the
carts ?

The stranger said they ought to have arrived hours
ago, and then they bid me good-bye, and I waited
once more. I was uncomfortable now — I was no
longer afraid. At least not till it grew dark, and
then, I must confess, the place seemed to me
strangely eerie. The sun was set, the moon was old,
and not due till the morning, the faint wind moaned
through the pine-branches, and the darkness was full
of all sorts of strange, mysterious, unexplainable
sounds. It was cold, cold, and the morning and the
light were a good eleven hours off.

Then just as I was in the depths of despair, there

866 A WOMAN IN CHINA

was a commotion in the courtyard, a lantern flashed
on the trunks of the pine-trees, and a kindly
American voice out of the darkness said :

" I thought I had better come down and see if
your outfit had turned up."

" There is not a sign of it." I wonder if there
was relief in my voice.

" No, so the people here tell me, and they are in
rather a way about you."

So that was why the dirty old gentleman had
apparently been stalking me. It had never occurred
to me that these people could be troubled about me,
this was a new and kindly light on Chinese character.

" Perhaps you'll come along with me," went on my
new friend. " I've got two ladies staying with me
from Tientsin, and they'll do the best they can for
you for the night."

Bless him, bless him, I could have hugged him.
Go, of course I went thankfully, and with his
lantern, he guided me over the steepest and roughest
of mountain paths till we came to his temple, a much
bigger one than mine.

" I thought there was no one left in the hills," I
said as we went along.

" I'm going next week," he said, " but I love this
valley. There is only one lovelier in the world — the
one I was born in."

"And where is that?"

' The Delaware Valley. These people," he went
on, " are mightily relieved to hear I am going to keep
you for the night."

Again I thanked him, and indeed he and his
friends were friends in need. " And I cannot make
them understand like you do," I said a little futilely.

WAYS OF THE CHINESE SERVANT 867

"Well, I ought to," he laughed. "I'm the
Language Officer."

He decided my carts had had time to come from
Peking and go back again, and they must have gone
up the wrong valley, and he and his friends took me
in and fed me> and comforted me, so that I was ready
to laugh at my woes, and then, just as we were
finishing an excellent dinner, there appeared on the
terrace, where we were dining, an agitated individual
with a guttering candle, my boy, whom I hardly
knew by sight yet.

He told a tale of woe and suffering. According
to him, the road to Jehol must have been nothing to
that road from Peking to the Western Hills, and I
and my new friends went down to inspect what was
left of my outfit. There wasn't much in it that was
smashable, and beyond salad oil in the bread and
kerosene in the salt, there was not much damage
done. I could not understand though how they
had come to grief at all, for the loads were certainly
light for two carts, and once in the hills, of c urse,
the goods were carried by men. And then the truth
dawned on me. It was the way of a Chinese servant
all over. I had been foolish enough to give my boy
the five dollars to pay for the two carts. He had
made one do, and pocketed two dollars fifty cents.
I asked him if such were not the case.

" Yes, sah," said he, and I wondered, till I found
that he always said " Yes, sah," whether he under-
stood me or not. More often than not he did not
understand, but that " sah " made me understand he
had learned his little English from a countryman of
my friend, the Language Officer.

And after all I think I was glad of the little

368 A WOMAN IN CHINA

adventure. I had not realised how eerie a temple
would be all by myself at night, and it was good to
think that for a night or two at least there would be
people of my own colour within a quarter of an hour
of me on the hill-side.

COURTYARD OF THE TEMPLE.

TIFFIN AT THE SAN SHAN AN.

CHAPTER XXI

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN

An old temple — Haunted — Wolf with green eyes — Loneliness
— Death of missionaries — Fear — Sanctuaries — " James
Buchanan " — Valiant farmers — Autumn tints — Famous
priest — Sacrifice of disciples — Tree conserving — Camels at my
gate — Servants — " Cook book " — Enchanted hills — Cricket
cages — Kindly people — The fall of Belshazzar — Hope for the
future.

AND with two servants and the temple coolies to wait
upon me I settled down in the San Shan An, the
Temple of the Three Mountains, the oldest temple in
this valley of temples, built long ago in the Sung
Dynasty. They said it was haunted, haunted by the
ghost of a big snake, and when the mud from the
roof fell as so much dust on the stone floor, and over
me, my tables and chairs and bed, my boy stretched
out his arms and explained that the snake had done
it. The snake, I found, always accounted for dust.
When my jam and butter disappeared, and I sus-
pected human agency, he said in his pidgin-English,

" I tink — I tink " and then words failed him, and

he broke out into spelling, " I tink it R — A — T."
Why he could spell that word and not pronounce it
I do not know, but until I left I did not know that
the snake that lived in my roof was supernatural. I
don't think even I could be afraid of the ghost of
a snake. The temple up above, the Language

369 2A

870 A WOMAN IN CHINA

Officer's temple, was haunted by a wolf with green
eyes, and that would have been a different matter.
I am glad I did not dare the wolf with green eyes.
For I was all by myself. The Language Officer,
the Good Samaritan, went back to Peking, and,
except at week-ends, when I persuaded a friend or
two to dissipate my loneliness, I was the only
foreigner in the valley. Go back to Peking until the
work I had set myself to do was done, I determined
I would not. It has been a curious and lonely
existence away in the hills, in the little temple
embosomed in trees, among a people who speak not
a word of my language ; but it had its charm. I had
my camp-bed set up on the little platform looking
out over the place of tombs, with the great Peking
plain beyond, and there, while the weather was
warm, I had all my meals, and there, warm or cold,
I always slept. When the evening shadows fell I
was lonely, I was worse than lonely, all that I had
missed in life came crowding before my eyes, all the
years seemed empty, wasted, all the future hopeless,
and I went to bed and tried to sleep, if only to
forget.

And China is not a good place in which to try
the lonely life. There are too many tragic histories
associated with it, and one is apt to remember them
at the wrong times. Was I afraid at night? I was,
I think, a little, but then I am so often afraid, and so
often my fears are false, that I have learned not to
pay much attention to them. I knew very well that
the Legations would not have allowed me, without
a word of warning, to take a temple in the hills, had
there been any likelihood of danger, but still, when
the evening shadows fell, I could not but remember

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 871

once again, Sir Robert Hart's dictum, and that if
anything did happen, I was cut off here from all my
kind. It was just Fear, the Fear that one personi-
fies, but another time, if I elect to live by myself
among an alien people, I do not think I will im-
prove my mind by reading first any account of the
atrocities those people have perpetrated at no very
remote period. As the darkness fell I was apt to start
and look over my shoulder at any unexplainable
sound, to remember these things and to hope they
would not happen again, which is first cousin to fear-
ing they would. At Pao Ting Fu, not far from here
as distances in China go, during the Boxer trouble,
the Boxers attacked the missionaries, both in the
north and the south suburb, just outside the walls of
the town. In the north suburb the Boxers and their
following burned those missionaries to death in their
houses, because they would not come out. They
dared not. Think how they must have feared,
those men and women in the prime of their life,
when they stayed and faced a cruel death from
which there was no escape, rather than chance the
mercies of the mob outside. One woman prayed
them to save her baby girl, her little, tender Mar-
garet, not a year old, her they might kill, and her
husband, and her two little boys, but would no one
take pity on the baby, the baby that as yet could not
speak. But though many of those who heard her
prayer and repeated it, pitied, they did not dare
help. It is a notable Chinese characteristic —
obedience to orders — and the lookers-on thought
that those in authority having ordered the slaughter
of the missionaries it was not their part to interfere.
They told afterwards how, as a brute rushed up the

872 A WOMAN IN CHINA

stairs, the mother, desperate, seized a pistol that lay
to her hand and shot him. I am always glad she
did that. And others told, how, through the moun-
ting flames, they could see her husband walking up
and down, leading his two little boys by the hand,
telling them — ah, what could any man say under
such terrible circumstances as that.

And in the south suburb the missionary doctor
was true almost to the letter of the faith he preached.
As the mob surrounded him, he took a revolver,
showed them how perfect was his command over the
weapon, how he could have dealt death right and
left, and then he tossed it aside and submitted to their
wicked will, and they took him and cut off his head.
But the fate of the women always horrified me most.
It was that that seemed most terrible in the dusk
of the evening. They took two of the unmarried
women, and one was too terrified to walk — having
once seen a Chinese crowd, filthy, horrible and
always filthy and horrible even when they are
friendly, one realises what it must be to be in their
power, one understands that girl's shrinking terror.
Her they tied, hands and feet together, and slung
her from a pole, exactly as they carry pigs to market.
Is this too terrible a thing to write down for everyone
to read? It almost seems to me it is. If so forgive
me. I used to think about it those evenings alone
in the San Shan An. And one of those women, they
say, was always brave, and gave to a little child her
last little bit of money as she walked to her death,
and the other, who was so terrified at first, recovered
herself, and walked courageously as they led her to
execution outside the city walls.

When I thought of those women I was ashamed

BRIDGE ACROSS MOAT, PAO TING FU.

CURTAIN WALL OF WEST GATE, PAO TING FU.

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 373

of the Fear that made me afraid to look behind me
in the dark, made me listen intently for unusual
sounds, and hear a thousand unexplainable ones.
I, in the broad daylight, went and looked in the
two sanctuaries that were at each end of my court-
yard, each with an image and altar in it. In
both were stored great matting bundles of Spanish
chestnuts, and in the larger, oh sacrilege ! oh bathos !
was my larder, and I saw eggs, and meat, and
cabbage, and onions, coming out of it, but I do not
think anything could have induced me to go into
those places after nightfall. I ask myself why — I
wonder — but I find no answer. The gods were only
images, the dust and dirt of long years was upon
them, they were dead, dead, and yet I, the most
modern of women was afraid — at night I was afraid,
the fear that seems to grow up with us all was upon
me. By and by a friend sent me out " James
Buchanan " — a small black and white k'ang dog,
about six inches high, but his importance must by
no means be measured by his size. I owe much
gratitude to James Buchanan for he is a most cheer-
ful and intelligent companion. I intended to part
with him when I left the hills, but I made him love
me, and then to my surprise, I found I loved him,
and he must share my varying fortunes. But what
is a wandering woman, like I am, to do with a little
dog?

We went for walks together up and down the
hill-sides, and the people got to know us, and
laughed and nodded as we passed. The Chinese
seem fond of animals, and yet you never see a man
out for a walk with his dog. A man with a bird-cage
in his hand, taking birdie for a walk, is a common

874 A WOMAN IN CHINA

sight in China, so common that you forget to notice
it, but I have never seen a man followed by a dog,
though most of the farm-houses appear to have one
or two to guard them. Here, in the hills, they were
just the ordinary, ugly wonks one sees in Peking,
not nearly such handsome beasts as I saw up in
the mountains. The farms in these hills evidently
require a good deal of guarding, for I would
often hear the crack of a gun. Some farmer, so my
friend, the Language Officer, told me, letting the
" stealer man," and anyone else whom it might con-
cern, know that he had fire-arms and was prepared
to use them. At first the reports used to startle
me, and make me look out into the darkness of the
hill-side, darkness deepened here and there by a
tiny light, and I used to wonder if anything was
wrong. " Buchanan " always regarded those reports
as entirely out of place, and said so at the top of
his small voice. But then he was always challeng-
ing wonks, or finding " stealer men," so I paid no
attention to him.

At the first red streak of dawn, for the temple
faced the east, I wakened. And all my fears, the
dim, mysterious, unexplainable fears born of the
night, and the loneliness, and the old temple, were
gone, rolled away with the darkness. The crescent
moon and the jewelled stars paled before the sun,
rising in a glory of purple and gold, a glory
that brightened to crimson, the pungent, aromatic
fragrance of the pines and firs came to my nostrils,
their branches were outlined against the deep blue
of the sky, and I realised gradually that another blue
day had dawned and the world was not empty, but
full of the most wonderful possibilities waiting but

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 875

to be grasped. Oh those dawnings in the San Shan
An! Those dawnings after a night in the open
air! Never shall I forget them!

And the valley was lovely that autumn weather.
Day after day, day after day, was the golden sun-
shine, the clear, deep blue sky, the still, dry, in-
vigorating air — no wonder everyone with a literary
turn yearns to write a book in a valley of the
Western Hills. And this valley of the San Shan
An was the loveliest valley of them all. It, too,
is a valley of temples, to what gods they were set up
I know not, by whom they were set up I know not,
only because of the gods and the temples there
are trees, trees in plenty, evergreen firs and pines,
green-leaved poplars and ash-trees, maples and
Spanish chesnuts. At first they were green, these
deciduous trees, and then gradually, as autumn
touched them tenderly with his fingers, they took
on gorgeous tints, gold and brown, and red, and
amber, the summer dying gloriously under the
cloudless blue sky. They tell me that American
woods show just such tints, but I have not been to
America, and I have seen nothing to match this
autumn in the Chinese hills. And I had not
thought to see beauty like this in China!

I counted seven temples, and there were prob-
ably more. Up the hill to the north of my valley,
beyond a large temple that I shall always remember
for the quaint and picturesque doorway, that I have
photographed, was a plateau to be reached by a
stiff climb, and here was a ruined shrine where sat
calmly looking over the plain, as he had probably
looked in life, the marble figure of a very famous
priest of the long ago. It is ages since this priest

376 A WOMAN IN CHINA

lived in the hills, but his memory is fragrant still.
He had two disciples. I wonder if the broken
marble figures, one beside him and one on the
ground outside the shrine, are figures of them.
There came a drought upon the land, the crops
failed and the people starved, and these two, to
propitiate a cruel or neglectful Deity, flung them-
selves into a well in the temple with the beautiful
doorway. Whether the rain came I know not, but
tradition says that the two disciples instead of per-
ishing rose up dragons. Personally I feel that must
have been an unpleasant surprise for the devotees,
but you never know a Chinaman's taste, perhaps
they liked being dragons. The country people
seem to think it was an honour. There was a farm-
house just beyond this shrine, a poor little place,
but here on the flat top of the hill there was a little
arable land, and the Chinese waste no land. Far
up the hill-sides, in the most inaccessible places, I
could see these little patches of cultivated ground.
It seemed to me that the labour of reaching them
would make the handful of grain they produced
too expensive, but labour hardly counts in China.
Up the paths toiled men and women, intent on
getting the last grain out of the land. Off the
beaten ways walking is pretty nearly impossible so
steep are the hill-sides, but of course there are
paths, paths everywhere, paved paths, in China
there are no untrodden ways, and upon these paths
I would meet the peasants and the priests, clad like
ordinary peasants in blue cotton, only with shaven
heads. My own landlord whom my boy called
" Monk," and generally added, " He bad man," used
to come regularly for his rent, and he was so fat that

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 377

the wicked evidently flourished like a green bay tree.
All the priests, I think, let out their temples as long
as they can get tenants, and whatever they are — my
landlord had beaten a man to death — much must be
forgiven them. They have gained merit because, in
this treeless China, they have conserved and planted
trees. Some little profit, I suppose they make out
of their trees because, one day in September, I
waked to the fact that at my gate, how they had
climbed up the toilsome, roughly-paved way I know
not, was a train of camels, and they had come to
take away the sacks that were stored in the sanctu-
ary under the care of the god. What on earth was
done with those Spanish chestnuts? They must
have been valuable when they were worth a train
of camels to take them away.

As far as I could see there was no worship done in
my temple, the coolies, who carefully locked the
sanctuary doors at night, were filthy past all descrip-
tion. I tried to put it out of my thoughts that they
occupied a k'ang at night in the room that did duty
for my kitchen, and I am very sure that they were
the poorest of the poor, but at night I would see the
youngest and dirtiest of them take a small and evil-
smelling lamp inside along with the god, but what
he did there I never knew. Only the lamp
inside, behind the paper of the windows lit up all
the lattice-work and made of that sanctuary, that
shabby, neglected-looking place, a thing of beauty.
But, indeed, the outside of all the buildings was
wonderful at night. In the daytime when I looked
I saw how beautiful was the lattice-work which made
up the entire top half of my walls. At night in the
courtyard when only a single candle was lighted

378 A WOMAN IN CHINA

their beauty was forced upon me, whether I would
or not. Always I went outside to look at those
rooms lighted at night. I walked up and down the
courtyard in the dark — " James Buchanan " gener-
ally hung on to the hem of my gown — I looked
at the lighted lattice-work of the windows, and I
listened to the servants and the coolies talking, and
I wondered what they discussed so endlessly, in
voices that sounded quite European.

They were good servants. The cook I know I
shall regret all my days, for I never expect to get a
better, and the boy was most attentive. Any little
thing that he could do for me he always did, and the
way they uncomplainingly washed up plates never
ceased to command my admiration. I had only a
camp outfit, the making of books may be weariness
unto the flesh, as Solomon says it is, but even then
it does not make me a rich woman, so I did not wish
to spend more than I could help, and yet I wanted
to entertain a friend or two occasionally. This
entailed washing the plates between the courses, and
the servants did it without a murmur. I came to
think it was quite the correct thing to wait while the
plates and knives for the next course were washed
up. My friends, of course, knew all about it, and
entered into the spirit of the thing cheerfully, but
the servants never gave me away. You would have
thought I had a splendid pantry, and my little scraps
of white metal spoons were always polished till they
looked like the silver they ought to have been. My
table linen I made simply out of the ordinary blue
cotton one meets all over China, and it looked so
nice, so suitable to meals on the look-out place, that
I shall always cherish a tenderness for blue cotton.

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 379

Indeed, but for the lonely nights when one thought,
it was delightful. I only hope my friends enjoyed
coming to me, as much as I enjoyed having them.
Their presence drove away all fears. I never feared
the gods in their sanctuaries, I never thought of
those who had perished In the Boxer trouble, or
the possibility of the return ol such days when they
were with me. I thought I had lost the delights of
youth, the joy of the land of long ago, but I found
the sensation of entertaining friends in the San Shan
An was like the make-believe parties of one's child-
hood. Sitting on the look-out place, away to the
south, we could see a range of low, bald hills. They
were enchanted hills. The Chinese would not go
near them, for all that the caves they held hidden
in their folds were full of magnificent jewels. We
planned to go over and get them some day before
I left the hills, and make ourselves rich for life.
But they were guarded by gnomes, and elves, and
demons, who by their nefarious spells kept us away,
though we did not fear like the Chinese, and we are
not rich yet, though jewels are there for the taking.

Oh, those sunny days in the mountain temple
when we read poetry, and told stories, and dreamed
of the better things life held for us in the future!
They were good days, days in my life to be remem-
bered, if no more good ever comes to me. Was it
the exhilarating air, or the company, or the temple
precincts ? All thanks give I to those dead gods who
gave me, for a brief space, something that was left
out of my life.

There was only one blot. That imaginative
document known as " Cook's book " was brought to
me afterwards. It wasn't a book at all, needless to

380 A WOMAN IN CHINA

say. It was written on rejected scraps of my type-
writing paper, and it generally stated I had eaten
more " Chiken " than would have sufficed to run a
big hotel, and disposed of enough " col " to keep a
small railway engine of my own. Then the flour,
and the butter, and the milk, and the lard, I was
supposed to have consumed! I did not at first like
to say much, because the servants were so good in
that matter of washing plates, and knives, and forks,
and whenever I did remonstrate the boy murmured
something about " Master." He was a true China-
man, he felt sure I would not grudge anything to
make a man comfortable. The woman evidently
did not matter. She was never urged as an excuse
for a heavy bill. I put it to him that the presence
of " Master " need not add so greatly to the coal bill,
and I put it very gently, till one day he mentioned
with pride that " Missie other boy was a great friend
of his." And I, remembering Tuan's powers in the
matter of squeeze, had gone about getting these ser-
vants through quite different channels! But once
this knowledge was borne in on me, I became hard-
hearted. I threatened to do the marketing myself.

" I talkee cook," said the crestfallen boy, and he
did "talkee cook," said, I suppose, Missie wasn't
quite the fool they had counted her, and presently
he came back and returned me fifteen cents! After
that I had no mercy, and I regularly questioned
every item of my bills.

But they were simple souls, and I couldn't help
liking them. It seemed hardly possible they could
belong to the same people who had slung a helpless
woman from a pole like a pig, bearing her to her
death, a woman from whom they had had naught

CAMELS AT MY GATE, SAN SHAN AN.

VISITORS AT THE SAN SHAN AN.

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 381

but kindness. And yet they were. The selfsame
subservience that made them bow themselves to the
Boxer yoke, was exactly the quality that made them
pleasant to me, who was in authority over them.
They were just peasants of Babylon, making the
best of life, deceiving and dissimulating, because
deception is the safeguard of the slave, the only
safeguard he knows. And they certainly made the
best of life. It amused me to watch their pleasures,
those tEat were visible to my eyes. They had a
little feast one night, with my stores, I doubt not,
and they caught and kept crickets in little three-
cornered cages which they made themselves. At
first, when I went to the temple, these cages were
hung from the eaves outside, but as the weather
grew colder they were taken inside, and I could hear
a cheery chirping, long after the crickets had gone
from the hills outside. It rained and was cold the
first week in October, and the servants, like the
babies they were, shivered, and suggested, " Missie
go back Peking," and one day when it rained hard
my tiffin was two hours late, and was brought by a
boy who looked as if he were on the point of burst-
ing into tears.

Certainly those temples are not built for cold
weather. Everything is ordered in China, even the
weather, and the first frost is due, I believe, on the
ist of November, and yet, on that day, I sat in the
warm and pleasant sunshine writing on the platform
that looked away to the enchanted hills, reflecting a
little sorrowfully that presently I would be gone, and
it would be abandoned for the winter.

For after that unexpected rain, which for once
was not ordered, the days were lovely, and the nights

882 A WOMAN IN CHINA

times of delight. The stars hung like diamond
drogs in the sky, the planets were scintillating cres-
cents, and, when the moon rose, the silver moon,
she turned the courtyard and the temple into a
dream palace such as never was on sea or land. It
was beauty and delight given, oh given with a lavish
hand.

And the people I saw in the hills were the kind-
liest I had yet met in China. I had little enough to
do with them, I could not communicate with them,
and yet this was borne in on me. Whenever we
met, dirty brown faces smiled upon me, kindly
voices with a burr in them gave me greeting, I was
regularly offered the baby of the farm-house at my
gates, much to that young gentleman's discom-
fiture, and whenever there was anything to see, they
evidently invited me to stay and share the sight.
Once a bridal procession passed with much beating
of gongs, the bride shut up in the red sedan chair,
and all the people about stood looking on, and I
stayed too. Another time they were killing a pig,
an unwieldy, gruesome beast, that made me forswear
pork, and I was invited to attend the great event.
The poor pig was very sorry for himself, and was
squealing loudly, but much as I wished to show I
appreciated kindliness, I could not accept that
invitation.

_ And here in the Western Hills I sat in judgment
upon the people I had known of all my life and
been amongst for the last ten months. Of course,
I have no right to sit in judgment but after all, I
should be a fool to live among people for some time
and yet have no opinion about them. And it seemed
to me that I was looking with modern eyes upon the

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 883

survival of one of the great powers of the ancient
world, Babylon come down to modern times,
Babylon cumbrously adapting herself to the pres-
sure of the nations who have raced ahead of the
civilisation that was hers when they were barbarian
hordes.

All along the Pacific Coast, on the west of
America, and the east of Australia, they fear the
Chinaman, and — I used to say his virtues. I put it
the wrong way. What the white races fear — and
rightly fear — is that the Chinaman will come in such
hordes, he will lower the standard of living, he will
bring such great pressure to bear, he will reduce
the people of the land in which he elects to live,
the people of the working classes, to his own con-
dition— the hopeless condition of the toiling slaves
of Babylon. It has been well said that the East,
China, is the exact opposite of the West in every
thought and feeling. In the West we honour
individualism. This is true of almost every nation.
A man is taught from his earliest youth to depend
to a great degree upon himself, that he alone is
responsible for his own actions. Even the women
of the more advanced nations — it marks their
advancement, whatever people may think — are
clamouring for a position of their own, to be judged
on their merits, not to be one of a class bound by
iron custom to go one way and one way only. In
the East this is reversed. No man has a right to
judge for himself, he is hide-bound by custom, he
dare not step out one pace from the beaten path
his fathers trod. The filial piety of the Chinese has
been lauded to the skies. In truth it is a virtue that
has become a curse. To his elders the Chinaman

884 A WOMAN IN CHINA

must give implicit, unquestioning obedience. His
work, his marriage, the upbringing of his children,
the whole ordering of his life is not his business but
the business of those in authority over him. If he
stepped out and failed, his failure would affect the
whole community. Whatever he does affects not
only himself, but the farthest ramifications of his
numerous family. This interdependence makes for
a certain excellence, an excellence that was reached
by the Chinese nation some thousands of years ago,
and then — it is stifling.

This patriarchal system, this continual keeping
of the eyes upon the past, has done away in the
nation with all self-reliance. A man must be not
only a genius, but possessed of an extraordinarily
strong will-power if he manage to shake off the
trammels and go his own way unaided, if he exer-
cise the sturdy self-reliance that sent the nations of
the West ahead by leaps and bounds, though the
Chinese had worked their way to civilisation ages
before them. Pages might be written on the sub-
servience and ignorance of the women.

" Oh but a woman has influence," say the men
who know China most intimately. And of course
she has influence, but in China it must often be the
worst form of power, the influence of the favourite,
favoured slave. The woman's influence is the
influence of a degraded, ignorant, and servile class,
a class that every man treats openly with a certain
contempt, a class that is crippled, mentally and
bodily. The Chinese, be it counted to them for
grace, have always held in high esteem a well-
educated man, educated on their archaic lines; but
not, I think, till this century, has it ever occurred to

COOK AND BOY, TEMPLE COURTYARD.

THE LOOK-OUT PLACE ABANDONED FOR THE WINTER.

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 385

them that a woman would be better educated. A
cruel drag upon the nation must be the appalling
ignorance of its women, the intense ignorance of
half the population. Things are changing, they
say, but, of necessity, they change most slowly.
Knowledge of any kind takes long, long to permeate
an inert mass.

We praise the Chinaman for his industry. But,
in truth, we praise without due cause. We of the
West have long since learned of the dignity of
labour and if we do not always live up to our
ideals, at least we appreciate them, and judged by
this standard the Chinaman is found wanting. He
does not appreciate the dignity of labour. The
long nails on the fingers of the man upon whom for-
tune has smiled proclaim to all that he has no need
to use his hands ; his fat, flabby, soft body declares
him rich and well-fed, and that there is no need to
exert himself. He is a man to be envied by the
greater part of the nation. The forceful, strenuous
life of the West, the life that has made the nations
has no charms for, excites no admiration in his
breast. Manual labour and strife is for the man
who cannot help himself. And, man for man, his
manual labour will by no means compare with that
accomplished by the man of the West. Nominally
he works from dawn to dark, really he wastes two-
thirds of the time, sometimes in useless, misdirected
effort, sometimes in mere idle loitering. He is a
slave in all but name. His life is dull, dull and
colourless; he can look forward to no recreation
when his work is over, theTrefore he spins it out the
livelong day. Home life, in the best sense of the
term, he has none, he may just as well stay at his

2B

886 A WOMAN IN CHINA

work, exchanging ideas and arguing with his
fellows.

Something to hope for, to live for, to work for,
seems to me the great desideratum of the majority
of the Chinese nation, something a little beyond the
colourless round of life. The greater part of the
nation is poor, so poor that industry is thrust upon
it, unless it worked it would of necessity die; the
struggle for life absorbs all its energies, gives it no
time for thought sufficient to raise it an inch above
the dull routine that makes up the daily round, but
the country is by no means poor, had it been there
would have been no such civilisation so early and so
lasting in the world's history, no such fostering of
a race that now, in spite of most evil sanitary con-
ditions, raises four generations to the three of the
man of the West.

China is a rich land and once she is wiser she
will be far richer still, for in her mountains are
such store of iron and coal as, once worked, may well
revolutionise the industrial world.

Now the thought of revolutionising the condition
of the industrial world brings me quite naturally to
the consideration of missionary effort.

For the last two hundred and fifty years the
Catholic, and for the last hundred years the Protes-
tant Churches, have been working in China with a
view to proselytising the people. And converts are
notoriously harder to make than in any other mis-
sionary field. Still they are made.

To me, a Greek, it does not seem to matter by
what name a man calls upon the Great Power that
is over us all — the thing that really matters is the
life of the man who calls upon that God. Now the

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 387

missionaries, whether they make converts, or
whether they do not, do this, they set up a higher
standard of living. They come among these slave
people, they educate them, men and women, they
care for the sick by thousands, and by their very
presence among them they show them, I speak of
material things, there is something beyond their
own narrow round, and they make them desire these
better things. If the Western nations are wise they
will allow no poor missionaries in China, it is so
easy to sink to the level of the people, to become as
Chinese as the Chinese themselves. Personally, I
think it is a mistake to conform to Chinese customs.
The missionaries are there to preach the better
customs of the West and there must be no lowering
of the standard. The Chinaman wants to be
taught self-reliance, he wants to be taught self-
respect, and, last but by no means least, he wants
to be taught to amuse himself rationally and
healthily. Now this in a measure, even this last, is
what the missionaries, the majority of them, are
teaching him, though, doubtless, they would not put
their teaching in exactly those words, might be even
surprised to hear it so described. They are helping
to break down the great patriarchal system which
has been stifling China for so many hundreds
of years. They are teaching responsibility, the
responsibility of every man and woman for his
and her own doings.

And they are pioneers of trade, forerunners of the
merchants who must inevitably follow in their foot-
steps. There are those who will say that they do
not influence the more highly educated portion of
the community, but they come to those who need

888 A WOMAN IN CHINA

them most. The rich can afford to send their sons
abroad, to pay for medical attendance. It is to
those of humble means that the schools and hospitals
introduced by foreign charity are an immeasurable
advantage, a boon beyond price. For the man who
has once come in contact with these foreigners never
forgets. He has seen their possessions, humble in
their eyes, wonderful in his, and in his heart a desire
is implanted — a desire for something a little better
than has satisfied his fathers. And slowly this little
leaven of discontent, heavenly discontent and dis-
satisfaction with things as they are, will permeate
the whole lump. China is daily coming more in
contact with the rest of the world. That world
ruthlessly shuts out her proletariat because it will
not be pulled down. It is well then that the pro-
letariat should be levelled up. The process is
slowly beginning when the missionaries put into
the hands of a labourer the Gospels, tell him he is
of as much value as the President in his palace, make
him desire to read, to wash his face to be just a little
better than his fellows. The creed he holds is a
small matter, but it is a great matter if he be no
longer a slave, but a self-respecting man fit to mingle
on equal terms with the men of the West. Such a
man will be more capable, more ready to develop the
resources of his own rich land; as a trader he will
be of ten times more value to the mercantile world
for ever on the look-out for a market. Whether
the nations then need fear him will be matter for
further consideration. It is possible things may
be adjusted on a comfortable basis of supply and
demand.

It would be unfair to give all credit for changing

FROM THE SAN SHAN AN 889

China to the missionaries. They are only one
factor in a general movement that her own sons, the
men of new China, have deeply at heart. The past
is going, but the great change will not be anything
violent. The Boxer tragedy awakened the Western
world thoroughly to what it had always felt, that an
Empire like Babylon was unsuited to the present
day, and they said so with shot and shell, and China
is taking the lesson to heart, slowly, slowly, but she
is taking it. She will have learned it thoroughly
when the need for change, the desire for better
things, the power to insist on a higher standard of
living shall have come to her lower classes, and
then she will not change exactly as the Western
world would wish, but as she herself thinks best.
The Chinese have always adapted themselves, and
in these modern times they will use the same
methods that they have done through the centuries.
There came forth the fingers of a man's hand and
wrote upon the plaster of the wall of the King's
Palace, " MENE MENE TEKEL UPHAR-
SIN." In tfiat night was Belshazzar, the King of
the Chaldeans, slain, and Darius the Mede took
the kingdom. So the men who made the Forbidden
City sacred have passed away, the Dowager-
Empress who defied the West has gone to her long
home, the Emperor is but a tiny child, his Empire
is confined within the pinkish red walls of the Inner
City, and the Republic, the new young Republic
with a Dictator at its head, reigns in his stead. But
the nation is stirring, the slow-moving, patient
slaves of Babylon. Will not a new nation arise that
shall be great in its own way even as the nations of
the West are great, for surely the spirit of those men

390 A WOMAN IN CHINA

who built the wondrous courtyards and halls of
audience of the Forbidden City, who planned the
pleasure-grounds at Jehol, who stretched the wall
over two thousand miles of mountain and valley, who
conceived the Altar of Heaven, the most glorious
altar ever dedicated to any Deity, must be alive and
active as it was a thousand years ago. And when
that spirit animates not the few taskmasters, but
the mass of the people, when it reaches the toiling
slaves and makes of them men, the nation will be
like the palaces and altars they built hundreds of
years ago, and the rest of the world may stand aside,
and wonder, and, perhaps, fear.

THE END

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